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Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed French foreign minister Laurent Fabius to the State Department in Washington on Tuesday to discuss a range of issues, from Iran to Syria to climate change. Or, in the words of the foreign minister, "climate chaos." Kerry and Fabius made a joint appearance before their meeting, and the foreign minister warned that only 500 days remained to avoid "climate chaos"[emphasis added]...

France on Friday banned soldiers stationed in the southwest from wearing uniform outside barracks after three paratroopers were shot dead in twin cold-blooded attacks. "Security advice has been given, particularly at the entrances of military bases," an army spokesman told AFP, adding that soldiers "have notably been asked not to wear their uniform outside barracks". The increased security measures apply to a whole swathe of the southwest, including Toulouse, Montauban, Pamiers and Tarbes, towns and cities that are home to most of France's elite airborne units.  The announcement came as police hunted a black-clad gunman who on Thursday calmly shot...

From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume: —On Harry Reid and Iraq— MORT KONDRACKE: But, you know, you have a dynamic going where everybody is ratcheting up their rhetoric and ratcheting up their position or making it more [confrontational], and I wonder whether there’s going to be a deal reached here. If there’s not a deal reached, the troops don’t get their money. If troops don’t get their money then they begin hurting as of a certain point. And I got to say, you know, if al Qaeda is watching American television, watching what’s going on in the United...

WASHINGTON - A defiant Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq by Oct. 1, propelling Congress toward a historic veto showdown with President Bush on the war. The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president's threatened veto. Neverthe less, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democratic-controlled House issued a symbolic rejection of President Bush's decision to deploy more troops to Iraq on Friday, opening an an epic confrontation between Congress and commander in chief over an unpopular war that has taken the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops. The vote on the nonbinding measure was 246-182. Resolution criticized President Bush for his decision to send more troops to Iraq is a rare admonishment of a wartime commander-in-chief. "The passage of this legislation signal a change in direction that will end the fighting and bring our troops home," House Speaker Nancy...

MORE than eight million litres of this season's production of Beaujolais wine is being turned into near-pure alcohol for use in disinfectants, cleaning products or fuel additives, as French vineyards face up to a massive overproduction crisis.A chronic wine glut, falling domestic consumption and fierce overseas competition have converged to create a wine crisis on an unprecedented scale. With "lakes" of unsold wine threatening to undermine prices, the European Union has resorted to paying vintners to destroy some of their stock each year, distilling billions of bottles of perfectly drinkable wine into pure alcohol. Sceptics say the measure, which cost...

WASHINGTON, DC, 8/26/05 – They are tall and muscular, with tanned arms bare to the shoulders. Their black leather vests are encrusted with insignia from their exploits, in the military and on motorcycles. Virile men with long gray hair and weathered skin, they are ageless bad boys with cordially menacing attitudes. They are bikers, and not just any bikers; they are three of the five board members of DC’s Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally and Thunder buddies from North Carolina, and they have just arrived, with heart-stopping engine roars and banshee brake stops, in a hospital zone. They have come to...

'Muslims are not cockroaches' The relative ease with which France deports Islamist clerics accused of inciting hatred or violence is raising alarm in the Muslim community, writes Jon Henley Thursday August 11, 2005 It may like to call itself proudly the "birthplace of human rights", but when it comes to dealing with Islamist clerics, France is rarely reluctant to set such scruples aside. The country waited only days after the London bombings before summarily expelling its first two radical preachers. It has since sent two more packing and plans to deport a total of some two dozen by the end...

NEWSFROM THE SECOND AMENDMENT SISTERS World Wide Web: http://www.2asisters.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 12, 2005 For additional information contact: SAS Press Team Phone: 877-271-6216 E-mail: press at 2asisters.org Sisters Oppose Anti-Rights Fundraiser at French Embassy LAKEWAY, TX -- It's billed as a birthday celebration for famed columnist Art Buchwald, but this party's main purpose is to raise funds for an organization determined to deprive Americans of their basic human right of self-defense - with the French Embassy providing the venue for the occasion. "This isn't about having a fundraiser. Everyone has them," said Deb Altrath, Co-Founder and President of Second...

When are we Americans going to wise up? How many times does the French government, led by Jacques Chirac (search), have to put all of us in danger before we get the picture? France is helping worldwide terrorism. Here's the latest. France has said no to Secretary of State Rice, who asked the Chirac government to designate Hezbollah (search) as a terrorist group. If France would do that, Hezbollah could not raise money in Europe, which it is now doing through various charitable fronts. There is no question Hezbollah is a terrorist group. It was responsible for killing more than...

HANOI, Oct 7 (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. Speaking at a French cultural centre in Hanoi ahead of Friday's opening of a summit of European and Asian leaders, Chirac said France was right to stand up for cultural and linguistic diversity. The outspoken French president warned that the world's different cultures could be "choked" by US values. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe". Citing Hollywood's stranglehold over...

Our War With France By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN t's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America...

It's been fun, but isn't it time to stop bashing the French? The gleeful stomping on all things from France has progressed from the moronic to the pathetic. First, there was the dimwit stuff, like renaming french fries "freedom fries" in congressional cafeterias. Now we have student-exchange programs unable to find American homes willing to take in French students over the summer. That's depressing. Like a chronic ailment, Francophobia flares now and then, especially when France tries to frustrate the United States on the world stage. The source of today's friction is, of course, the war in Iraq. A walk...

How France Blocked U.S. In Ankara MICHAEL LEDEEN Everybody knows that Turkey did not permit America to stage operations from Turkish bases, but hardly anybody realizes that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the vote was not an Islamic protest against the American-led coalition,but an act of anti-American intimidation by France and Germany. The Turkish government, which for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire is based on an Islamic party, fully expected that Parliament would approve its proposal that America be given the use of Turkish air bases in the Iraqi war.The government was so confident that...

Bastard just said it...if we attack Iraq they are out as a partner on the war on terror.

The French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin is reading Saddam a Valentine's Day love letter in the Security Council. He is shamelessly defending Saddam and echoing the rants of leftists against America's self-defense. Let's FReep the French Embassy to the United States. The address and phone number are:Ambassador Jean-David Levitte 4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007 Telephone (202) 944-6000 Fax (202) 944-6166

Carving Up the Pie On a Post-Colonial Planet American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy by Andrew J. Bacevich Harvard University Press (2002) Review by Richard Cummings The rantings by American pundits such as Thomas Friedman, as well as by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about the irrelevancy and spoiler role of the garlic eating, wine-quaffing nation of France misses the point entirely. All the talk about the meaning of perfidious, the passion to be at the center of the world that can never be fulfilled, and how India, and not France, belongs on the Security Council,...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- France is no longer an ally of the United States and the NATO alliance "must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance" the head of the Pentagon's top advisory board said in Washington Tuesday. Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now chairman of the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board, condemned French and German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms at a public seminar organized by Iraqi exiles and American Middle East and security officials. But while dismissing...

In a cross-cultural study of affection and aggression done at McDonald's playgrounds, pre-schoolers in France playfully touched each other twice as much US children did, but while the French children acted aggressively only 1 percent of the time, the US youth did so 29 percent of the time. Anthropologists have long known that cultures that shower physical affection on young children have little adult violence, dating back to Margaret Mead's studies in New Guinea. But the study in McDonald's playgrounds in France and the United States, along with other new evidence, suggests that it's time for America to take another...