Will France surrender?

[johnb]

www.washtimes.com

France to negotiate for Iraq hostages

Paris, France, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The French foreign minister was expected Sunday to begin negotiations for the release of two journalists taken hostage in Iraq.

President Jacques Chirac confirmed Sunday he had sent Michel Barnier to Egypt to bring about the reporters' release from the Islamic Army in Iraq, Aljazeera.net reported.

The group has demanded Paris end its ban on headscarves in state schools by Monday evening

"Everything has been done and everything will be done in the hours and days to come to make sure that happens," Chirac said in a televised address.

Barnier hopes to negotiate the release of Radio France Internationale correspondent Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper, who went missing nine days ago.

[dhyatt]

www.washtimes.com

France to negotiate for Iraq hostages

Paris, France, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The French foreign minister was expected Sunday to begin negotiations for the release of two journalists taken hostage in Iraq.

President Jacques Chirac confirmed Sunday he had sent Michel Barnier to Egypt to bring about the reporters' release from the Islamic Army in Iraq, Aljazeera.net reported.

The group has demanded Paris end its ban on headscarves in state schools by Monday evening

"Everything has been done and everything will be done in the hours and days to come to make sure that happens," Chirac said in a televised address.

Barnier hopes to negotiate the release of Radio France Internationale correspondent Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper, who went missing nine days ago.

I hope they have a plan for the next abduction when the terrorists demand that France institute Sharia law. They'd have to be blind in order to not see it coming...

[Wuptdo]

Gentleman, I believe a small history lesson on the French is needed before this thread can advance. Please see below:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

Enjoy! :wink:

Wuptdo B-)

[johnb]

Wup,

Your list ommitted what is probably the most embarassing military defeat in French history. Cinco de Mayo celebrates the MEXICAN victory over the French Foreign Legion. France is the only country in world history to ever loose a war with Mexico. Drink your coffee and contemplate that. The US invaded Mexico almost 20 years before the War of Damned Yankee Aggression, our forces were outnumbered at every significant battle, launched our first amphibious assault in combat, in a hostile country, and thousands of miles from supply depots in the US. We smashed their defenses, captured their capital, and compelled the capitulation of a military force designed and equipped on French lines. The Europeans considered the Mexicans a superior military force because they were trained and modeled on the French military. That war produced men who would later become military geniuses two decades later (Grant, Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Johnston, et al) On the Mexican side, Santa Ana was finally wrecked. However, while we fought ourselves, they fought the French and won.

By the way I am lost trying to figure out which I like best:

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

"They're there when they need you."

[Laurie]

France: Headscarf ban stays
Foreign minister tries to free hostages in Iraq
Monday, August 30, 2004 Posted: 2:59 PM EDT (1859 GMT)

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- The French government has said it will not revoke a law banning Muslim headscarves in public schools, despite demands by a militant Islamic group holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq.

"The law will be applied," spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told Canal Plus television Monday.

Read the rest here:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/30/france.hostages.villepin/index.html

[Don]

I AINT SURRENDERING!!!!!!......oops....wait a minute....nevermind. :wink:

[johnb]

They blustered in the summer of 1939 too.

So unless there is some hidden history of the French actually doing something to aid Poland their bluster amounted to nothing.

They blustered in the spring of 1940 as well.

None of it prevented a lot of French women from horizontally "dating" German occupation troops after the Wehrmacht marched under the Arc d' Triumphe.

:twisted:

We'll see. They've licked Roman, English, Italian, Austrian, German, Mexican, and Viking boots. They'll lick Arab sandals with a few terror strikes in metropolitan France to induce them onto their hands and knees.

[editor_andy]

France: Headscarf ban stays

Alright, its illegal for headscarves to be worn in France....

Click Here (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/02/10/france.marriage.ap/)

But its perfectly legal for someone to marry a dead person.


Oh, a little known fact: During the Cola Wars, France was actually occupied by Pepsi for six months.

[johnb]

[Nepal and France:] Two Opposite Responses to Terrorism
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
September 14, 2004
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2076
http://www.nysun.com/article/1684

Two terrorist dramas began in Iraq on the same day, Aug. 19, 2004, when jihadists separately seized 12 Nepalese workers and 2 French reporters. Although their fates may end differently - the former were murdered and the latter remain alive in captivity - it is striking how similarly impotent both victim populations felt and how differently they responded.

In the Nepalese case, a group of cooks, janitors, laundry attendants, and other laborers had just crossed the border from Jordan into Iraq when it was kidnapped by Ansar al-Sunna, a violent Islamist group. On Aug. 31, an Islamist website showed a four-minute video of their executions.

Nepalese responded to this atrocity by venting their anger by assaulting the Muslim minority in Nepal. Hundreds of infuriated young men surrounded Katmandu's one mosque on Aug. 31 and heaved rocks at it. Violence escalated the next day, with five thousand demonstrators taking to the street, yelling slogans like "We want revenge," "Punish the Muslims," and "Down with Islam." Some attacked the mosque, broke into it, ransacked it, and set fire to it. Hundreds of Korans were thrown onto the street, and some were burned.

Rioters also looted other identifiably Muslim targets in the capital city, including embassies and airline bureaus belonging to Muslim-majority countries. A Muslim-owned television station and the homes of individual Muslims came under attack. Mobs even sacked the agencies that recruit Nepalese to work in the Middle East.

The violence ended when armored cars and army trucks enforced a shoot-on-sight curfew, leaving two protesters dead and 50 injured, plus 33 police, and doing an estimated US$20 million in property damage.

Thus did a frustrated, enraged, and powerless people overwhelm their authorities and target close-by innocents.

The French response could not have been more different. Threats to murder the two reporters met with a massive governmental effort to save their lives, not by targeting French Muslims but by cultivating them. Paris strenuously pushed local Islamists to condemn the kidnappings, hoping that their voice would convince the terrorists to release the two men.

In the process, Islamic organizations effectively took charge of the country's foreign policy, issuing statements and acting as though they represented the national population. Bertrand Badie of l'Institut d'études politiques in Paris complains that French Muslims became "a sort of substitute for the French foreign ministry."

Likewise on the international level, Paris called in chits for having stood with the Arabs against Israel and with Saddam Hussein against the U.S.-led coalition. French diplomats openly sought the support of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

These efforts culminated thirty years of French appeasement and, in the scathing analysis of Norbert Lipszyc, "constituted a major victory for Islamists and terrorists." Lipszyc sees France acting like a dhimmi (a Christian or Jew who accepts Muslim sovereignty and in return is tolerated and protected). "France has publicly confirmed that its dhimmi status, its readiness to submit to Islamist overlords. In return, these have declared that France, dhimmi that it is, deserves protection from terrorist acts."

If the hostages are released, the policy of appeasement at home and abroad will seemingly have been vindicated. But at what a price! As Tony Parkinson writes in Melbourne's Age newspaper, "No democracy should have to jump through these hoops to keep innocent people alive." And jumping those hoops has deep implications.

The historian Bat Ye'or, the first person to comprehend the gradual process of Europe accepting the dhimmi status, observes that this fundamental shift began with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when the continent began moving "into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity."

Bat Ye'or points to Euro-Arab collaboration now being near-ubiquitous; it is "political, economic, religious and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press, publishers, and writers unions." She envisions this shift ending in "Eurabia," or Europe under the thumb of Arabia.

Returning to recent events: the abhorrent Nepalese violence reflected an instinct for self-preservation - hit me and I will hit you back. In contrast, the sophisticated French reaction was supine - hit me and I will beg you to stop. If history is a guide, the Nepalese thereby made a repetition of atrocities against themselves less likely. And the French made such a repetition more likely.

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[Wuptdo]

Oh, the French, need I say more........

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=81082005

They finally figured out how irrelevant they really are. :lol: :lol:

And remember, please continue to boycott French companies and products.

http://www.boycottwatch.org/misc/france-04.htm

Wuptdo B-)

[Wuptdo]

A new internal wave of "terrorist" attacks on government buildings in France:

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=625568

Maybe that boycott is finally having an effect. I just have a hard time that people will turn to violence in order to keep their government subsidies.

Wuptdo B-)

[Wuptdo]

I came across this little gem while searching for something else. Anyway, it is an opportunity to expand your knowledge of French culture and language.

http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~mongoose/french/phrases.html#bonjour

8-O 8O :-D

Wuptdo B-)

[Wuptdo]

This will make you think of your purpose in life:

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=56278

I can't but think how true it would be if you exchanged the word "Frenchmen" with "democratic male" in the story above will still be just as true. :D :D

Wuptdo B-)