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1 posted on 04/21/2002 5:06:45 PM PDT by Pokey78
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To: Pokey78
Good grief!
2 posted on 04/21/2002 5:08:23 PM PDT by MoJo2001
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To: Pokey78
Le Pen is only succesful because the French liberals have left the country be invaded by millions of Arabs. A nation with two opposing cultures is destined to have a clash.
3 posted on 04/21/2002 5:09:00 PM PDT by dinok
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To: Pokey78
Damned usurpers. Horrifying the EU is our job!
4 posted on 04/21/2002 5:19:31 PM PDT by Dakmar
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To: Pokey78
France, remember, led the EU in demanding sanctions against Austria when Jorg Haider, like M Le Pen yesterday, came second in an election.

France did that because of the Chirac people's fear of the Front National.

5 posted on 04/21/2002 5:26:01 PM PDT by aristeides
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To: Pokey78
THIS is a bad time to be a Frenchman.

Gee, Telegraph, has there ever been a good time to be a Frenchman? Never in history has there been a culture so impressed with itself for so little reason. True, they can whip up a tasty plate of grub (if you're not too squeamish about the ingredients), but that's a pretty weak foundation to build a reputation on.

With all the legitimate reasons for trashing France, focusing on who finishes second in a race seems a mite silly. One gets the feeling that they wouldn't feel alarmed in the least if the Communists finished second. Le Pen won't come close to prevailing in the runoff; I'm guessing Chirac will win by something like 70-30. The real danger is that the leftists will attempt to take credit for Chirac's win, and demand cabinet positions and legislative concessions.

6 posted on 04/21/2002 5:48:32 PM PDT by southernnorthcarolina
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To: Pokey78
The French are reaping the results of the socialist state: massive state intervention into the economy has stultified growth, massive tax rates leave little disposable income with which to purchase goods and created a giant underground economy, unions hold the economy hostage, strict laws on 35-hour work weeks destroy global market competitiveness and created a huge brain drain as the best and brightest who want to be remunerated for their efforts leave for Britain or the U.S., strict gun control leads to high crime rates and in the public housing projects unassimilated immigrants with little to no hope of future employment become radical Wahabbists...

And the electorate becomes increasingly frustrated with platitudes and broken promises (something for which Chirac has become well-known) and in their frustration turn to any alternative, if only to make a protest vote. We'll see what happens in the second round.

7 posted on 04/21/2002 6:03:53 PM PDT by austinTparty
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To: Pokey78
French voters will have horrified their EU partners

This is bad?

8 posted on 04/21/2002 6:11:05 PM PDT by B-bone
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To: Pokey78
Ze lef' wing, she 'as already started

PARIS (Reuters) - Demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and a clutch of French cities late on Sunday in protest at the shock triumph of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of presidential elections. Reuters correspondents said up to 10,000 protesters, many of them young leftists, filled the boulevard linking Place de la Bastille and Place de la Republique in the capital after Le Pen won through to a May 5 runoff against President Jacques Chirac. About 2,000 demonstrators sat on the cobblestones in Place de la Concorde, banging litter bins like drums and holding banners that read: "Le Pen. Shame." Marchers also massed in Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble and Strasbourg, where about 4,000 demonstrators shouted "Le Pen, you're finished. The French are on the streets" and "Fascism shall not pass." There were no immediate reports of disturbances. In Paris, police said they had blocked a group of protestors who were trying to march on the Elysee presidential palace. Le Pen, the 73-year-old leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-Europe National Front party, pushed Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place in the contest. Jospin announced on Sunday that he would quit politics after the runoff, which polling institutes now forecast Chirac, a conservative, will win by a landslide. Several of the demonstrations played on corruption allegations that have swirled around Chirac. "Vote sleaze, not fascist," protestors shouted in the northern city of Lille. Le Pen, who once called the Holocaust a detail of history, played down some of his more extreme rhetoric during the campaign, which he focused on law and order in a response to widespread public concern over rising crime. He dismissed the fascist label some of his opponents have given him in remarks on French television. "I have nothing to do with fascism," Le Pen said. "Fascism is protesting the result of a vote violently in the street."

10 posted on 04/21/2002 6:25:20 PM PDT by scouse
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To: Pokey78
Exactly when has it been a good time to be a cheese eating surrender bunny? (with apologies to GKW)
15 posted on 04/21/2002 7:25:14 PM PDT by Feckless
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To: Pokey78
He is the heir to a nasty, authoritarian tradition on the French Right, one that has no real equivalent in British politics: the tradition of the anti-Dreyfusards, of Charles Maurras and the Action Franaise, of Vichy.

This statement is an outrage.

Francois Mitterand, the patron saint of French Communists, WAS a Vichy collaborationist Stiefel-licking surrender monkey; no such charge could be leveled at Le Pen by any journalist with a nanogram of integrity.

16 posted on 04/21/2002 8:03:39 PM PDT by Castlebar
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To: Pokey78
With no Left-wing candidate, the coming weeks promise the gruesomely entertaining spectacle of M Chirac and M Le Pen scrabbling for socialist votes.

Oh, I think the FAR more entertaining spectacle will be watching the angry sputtering socialists forced to choose one of these two men!

Fears about crime and immigration were kept constantly in the news by a series of anti-Semitic attacks by French Muslims. Yet the mainstream candidates made no real attempt to address these concerns.

That's because they're as anti-Semitic as the Muslims, and they worship the Muslims because they consider them to be "oppressed." Like most EUnuchcrat socialist elitist governments, they have almost nothing in common with the beliefs and desires of the average voter. And they're finally starting to pay the price.

20 posted on 04/21/2002 8:52:11 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: Pokey78
.....French voters will have horrified their EU partners.

Good. I would give anything to see their "horrified" faces. ha

21 posted on 04/21/2002 8:52:58 PM PDT by Jorge
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