NON!!!
Posted on 05/30/2005 3:27:09 PM PDT by phoenix_004
WHAT a difference two years makes. In the spring of 2003, Jacques Chirac was striding the world stage, the idol of France and hero of many other nations for standing up to the “les Anglo-Saxons” and their invasion of Iraq.
The 72-year-old President looked out from the Elysée Palace yesterday on a field of ruins, his long political career blighted by a referendum in which the people took a sledgehammer to France’s role as pillar of the European Union.
“The emperor is naked,” les Echos, the business daily, said. “The Broken Dream of Jacques Chirac,” said Le Figaro, the most pro-Chirac of papers.
Under M Chirac France now finds itself in the European dog house after voters vented their wrath against the President, the political class and the modern world in general.
M Chirac now faces two years in the twilight before retirement, as Nicolas Sarkozy, his rival and leader of his Union for a Popular Movement, manoeuvres to succeed him.
Despite moderate reforms, unemployment has risen again to 10 per cent and real incomes have stagnated. M Chirac is blamed for breaking his 1995 campaign promises to “heal the social fracture”, the unemployment and exclusion that he diagnosed as the main French ill.
True to form, M Chirac went into the referendum campaign with the prevailing backlash against capitalism, now tagged as “liberalism”, and promised that the constitution would protect the country against the free-market jungle. After so many years in which M Chirac’s rhetoric clashed with reality, it was not surprising that a majority of voters did not buy his argument.
The people’s revenge has been cruel. M Chirac has been cut down in the one domain in which he was deemed him to excel: presenting France on the international stage.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
NON!!!
Now is the time to redouble our efforts and continue our boycott of french (or any european) products. America must keep saying "non" to europe. Screw them.
Thank you, and a Happy Memorial Day to you also - brother.
Semper Fi
Everyone still misunderstands the driving fact behind the European Union.
It was never to established a United States of Europe.
Nor was it to counterbalance the US.
It was and always will be about France gaining control of Europe for the grater glory of France. It was that way 300 years ago under the Bourbon monarchy. It was that way 200 years ago under Napoleon. Not sure how the French missed the first half of 20th century - guess Germany kept knocking them back. The second half started under de Gaul and continued under a host of lesser individuals.
The European Union was doomed when the Soviet Union fell. With Eastern Europe (or “new” Europe) becoming part of the European Union France could no longer dominate the organization. Once the French voters realized that, they lost all interest in the European Union. Unfortunately, their political leadership couldn’t reverse their field quick enough to “lead” the French Voters.
Oddly enough, I wish that Chirac stays in power - we know where most of his dirty laundry is and who he listens too when it comes to international politics. Any replacement will take us time to identify his “advisors’.
I only wish our President would be more concerned about the invasion against our own borders, language and culture....
To say nothing of the Islamanazis we haven't yet discovered, arrested, and deported.
Semper Fi
"Well, no one can out-sneer the French."
Or out taunt...
GUARD: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt!
GALAHAD: What a strange person.
ARTHUR: Now look here, my good man!
GUARD: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
GALAHAD: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
GUARD: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
Well, you are taking what I wrote too literally. Bill Clinton could come to Paris, "convert" to Catholicsm, and repeat the old adage about "Paris being worth a mass." And the Frenchmen would fall for him . . . until they grow bored with the genuine boor he really is. Remember, the late liberal David Brinkley called Bill Clinton a "boor" on national TV the night of the President's 1996 reelection. Of course, Brinkley was a close friend but not a political intimate of Clinton rival Robert J. Dole.
Did the French ever backstab Napoleon I -- can't recall directly?
I guess they prefer the earlier, thinner Jerry.
True-the socialists killed this, But I'd guess it's more a matter of French insolence, rather than belief in a better idea as a nation.
France lusts for what it was 2 centuries ago, when it had a unity of believing people and world power. What is it now...12% go to church? For the rest, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity has degenerated into Nihilism, Sarcasm and Orgasm. You have to feel sorry for them-a once great nation that believes in nothing today but obsessed with an imaginary perception as a world power. They willed themselves into a third rate status by worshipping Sartre, Voltaire and Marx over God-now they're backsliding into Dhimmitude and further irrelevance. The EU was their great hope for eclipsing America, but it's atheism, not economics that is the source of their weakness. No wonder they lead the world in depression. (consuming 78 tranquilizers and antidepressants per 1,000 persons!)
"Anyone care to "edumacate" me on what it means for the future of Europe? If it is 300 pages long, I probably would have voted no to it too, just on principle."
The reason the French voted against it is quite simple. It did not provide sufficient protections for their socialistic utopia. The French are scared to death that this constitution would allow a flood of east europeans to move into france taking their service jobs while their manufacturing jobs are threatened by cheap imports from the east. Read closely, this article hints at this.
I hope they dump Chirac just as the Oil for WMD scandal goes nuclear. Then he can be indicted.
Here's link to another article here on Free Republic that provides a more detailed explanation of why the French voted Non.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1413385/posts
Agreed. I wonder in years to come if the French will up their defense budget as Eastern Europe becomes more powerful, thus depriving their citizens of the goodies they've become so accustomed to. Should take 'em down a notch or two, if they aren't an Islamic Theocracy by then.
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