Free Republic

What If Germany Gets Bogged Down Too? Or Has It Already?Wolf RichterFriday, February 22, 2013 at 6:29PM All hopes rest on Germany: its vibrant economy teeming with globalized, ultra-competitive, export-focused companies would drag France and other Eurozone countries out of their economic morass. But then, there’s reality. That France with its double-digit unemployment fiasco is losing its grip was hammered home by the Purchasing Managers Index. After three months of false-hope upticks, it crashed to a low not seen since March 2009, the trough of the financial crisis! Business activity has been skidding for 18 months, and new orders, a...

There have been many wonderful letters written through time on a number of topics including love (Napoleon, Beethoven and Lewis Caroll), fatherly advice (Reagan and Fitzgerald), and condolence; perhaps none better than Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby, but my favorite letter of indignation, honesty, and dire warning came this week from the CEO of Titan (TWI) to the industry minister of France. On January 31 of this year, Goodyear Tire made the decison to close its sprawling commerical and farm tire plant in north France. The company in fact decided to bolt Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It simply...

PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tire company has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day. Titan International's Maurice "Morry" Taylor, who goes by "The Grizz" for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France's left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant. "The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one...

This German concern has proven to be well founded, as the recent spate of French economic data has been truly horrific. Auto sales for 2012 fell 13% from those of 2011. Sales of existing homes outside of Paris fell 20% year over year for the third quarter of 2012. New home sales fell 25%. Even the high-end real estate markets are collapsing with sales for apartments in Paris that cost over €2 million collapsing an incredible 42% in 2012. Since the EU Crisis began in 2008, France and Germany have been the two key countries backstopping the implosion. The fact...

Miss France 2012 at the Miss Universe competition was the lovely Marie Payet. Born August 17, 1992, she grew up on the small Island of La Réunion, just off the west coast of France. This one's the sporty, adventurous type -her latest thing is surfing- and has displayed some serious musical talent as well, already recording a duet single with a more established French artist.  Marie Payet seems to have made some sort of impression in Vegas last December too, as she was a Top-10 Finalist in the Miss Universe competition- not hard to see why: More at Reaganite...

MUNICH — The leader of the Syrian opposition council, Mouaz al-Khatib, met here today with key representatives of the United States and Russia — who fundamentally disagree on how to resolve Syria's civil war — but the meetings were separate and there was no indication, officials said, that any progress had been made toward a workable plan to bring the violence to an end. snip Senior European officials here said Britain and France were both urging the Obama administration to stop blocking allies in the Persian Gulf, like Qatar, from providing rebels with more sophisticated arms and intelligence assistance. snip...

Eight feminists flashed their breasts in the heart of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday to celebrate Pope Benedict XVI's shock resignation announcement. The members of the Femen movement entered the Gothic cathedral dressed in long coats which they whipped off inside while ringing three bells near the altar. "Pope no more!" they cried. "No more homophobe" and "Bye bye Benedict!" Scandalised visitors voiced their disapproval. "This is a sacred place, you can't strip here," said a Frenchwoman....

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Islamist insurgents launched a surprise raid in the heart of the Malian town of Gao on Sunday, battling French and local troops in a blow to efforts to secure Mali's recaptured north. ... French helicopters clattered overhead and fired on al Qaeda-allied rebels armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades who had infiltrated the central market area and holed up in a police station, Malian and French officers said. The fighting inside Gao was certain to raise fears that pockets of determined Islamists who have escaped the lightning four-week-old French intervention in Mali will strike back with guerrilla attacks and suicide...

Head of Doha Coalition Moaz al-Khatib told the Israeli Newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that “the new regime in Syria” will not be a foe to ‘Israel’ and will not attack it, SANA news agency reported. Al-Khatib added that "Israel shouldn't be worried over the issue of the chemical weapons as the opposition coalition will possess the regime's stockpiles of weapons, including the chemical and prevent them from falling in to Hezbollah's hands." He said that the coalition has a plan to impose control over the strategic weapons in Syria in case the regime falls. He described Hezbollah as "sons of devil",...

A former U.S. ambassador to Mali has alleged that France paid a $17 million ransom to free hostages seized from a French mining site – cash she said ultimately funded the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants its troops are now fighting. French officials, whose soldiers are pushing north into the territory where the missing captives are believed to be held, denied paying any ransoms. Huddleston, who served as ambassador to Mali and held positions in the State Department and Defense Department in the U.S. before retiring, told France’s iTele network that the French money allowed al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch to flourish in...

A former US ambassador to Mali has told the BBC that France that paid ransom money to free hostages and the funds ended up bolstering Islamist groups it is now fighting. Vicki Huddleston said France paid $17m (£10.75m) to free hostages seized from a uranium mine in Niger in 2010. She said other European countries, including Germany, had also paid ransoms amounting to nearly $90m. France has always denied that it pays ransoms for the release of hostages. ... Ms Huddleston said the hostages kidnapped at the Niger mine in 2010 were only released because money had changed hands. "All...

President François Hollande's 47-year old partner was slammed for eschewing her Left-wing principles in favour of unabashed champagne Socialism despite the threat of "thousands of job losses in the coming weeks" in companies ranging from Renault to Air France. VSD, the weekly magazine, trained its ire on the 47-year-old divorcee's decision to attend the haute couture shows of Paris fashion week

A law professor from Georgetown University, Louis Michael Seidman, went on CBS TV and said we should give up on the Constitution: I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution. . . . This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country,...

'"Several hundred" Islamist militants have been killed since France launched an offensive in Mali last month, the French defence minister has said. Jean-Yves Le Drian said they had been killed in airstrikes and direct combat with French troops. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that France may begin pulling out of Mali as early as March. In a newspaper interview, he said that "if everything goes as planned, the number of troops should diminish". France has an estimated 4,000 troops in Mali and officials from multilateral institutions and dozens of countries have been meeting in Brussels to discuss how...

Michel Sapin made the gaffe in a radio interview, which left French President Francois Hollande battling to undo the potential reputational damage. “There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,” Mr Sapin said. “That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.” The comments came as President Hollande attempts to improve the image of the French economy after pledging to reduce the country’s deficit by cutting spending by €60bn (£51.5bn) over the next five years and increasing taxes by €20bn.

(CNN) -- France expects to begin pulling its troops out of Mali in March, the French foreign minister told the Metro newspaper. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said troops will continue operations in northern Mali, where he said "some terrorist havens remain." ... France has 2,150 soldiers in Mali and 1,000 more troops supporting the operation from elsewhere.

While the number of converts remains relatively small in France, yearly conversions to Islam have doubled in the past 25 years, experts say, presenting a growing challenge for France, where government and public attitudes toward Islam are awkward and sometimes hostile. French antiterrorism officials have been warning for years that converts represent a critical element of the terrorist threat in Europe, because they have Western passports and do not stand out. In October, the French police conducted a series of antiterrorism raids across France, resulting in the arrests of 12 people, including at least three French citizens who had recently...

Minister for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton has described Ireland’s position on military neutrality as “narcissistic”, but conceded it would be difficult for Fine Gael to win public support for a major shift in defense policy. A report on Ireland by one of France’s main EU think tanks, due to be published today, quotes Creighton saying she is “very supportive” of Ireland joining common European defense, but doesn’t believe her party could gain “political traction for that in the short term”. … The report by Notre Europe (Institut Jacques Delors), published to mark the 40th anniversary of Ireland’s EU accession, concludes...

An archaic by-law banning Parisian women from wearing trousers has finally been repealed 214 years after it was originally introduced. The November 1799 decree stipulated that any woman wishing to wear men’s clothing in the French capital had to seek official permission from the city authorities. It was amended two times a century later, when women were given the freedom to don “pantalons” [trousers] if they were “holding the handlebars of a bicycle or the reins of a horse.” The decree was passed when the working class fashion of wearing long trousers (as opposed to the aristocratic knee-length “culottes”) became...