By John Loretz | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | March 13, 2015 President François Hollande of France has explained to the world why nuclear weapons must be banned and eliminated. Not intentionally, of course. Not because he made the fallacious argument that nuclear weapons make France more secure in a dangerous […]
Image: France’s President François Hollande addresses a Paris ceremony commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 27 January (Presidency of France)
The planned crackdown raises concern that French authorities will use their powers to further censor speech critical of Israel under the guise of combating anti-Semitism
Francois Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with a war in Mali, after his country enthusiastically took on Libya. While he succeeded at launching wars, he failed at managing their consequences as the latest attacks in Paris have demonstrated.
Speaking outside Elysée Palace in the aftermath of this week’s terror killings in France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the violence as “an attack on civilization.” Coiffured, sun-tanned and nattily dressed, Sarkozy’s solemn words made him appear like the embodiment of civility.
That’s a quaint turn in etiquette by a politician who is mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption, as well as war crimes.
Two Muslim killers wiped out the whole editorial team of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo at noontime in Paris on Wednesday, January 7, 2015. This cold-blooded murder is an indefensible crime. The killers claimed that they have “avenged the Prophet Mohammad”. And Allah was considered “great”. Have they committed their heinous crime in the name or in defense of Islam? Charlie Hebdo has a long history of angering Muslims with cartoons, but it caricatured also all religions.
There is no question that over the past decade and a half, Europe, the US, and Israel have engaged in a series of bloody wars, inequalities have increased throughout the globe, economic crisis has become endemic and, more recently, right-wing military and civilian regimes have swept to power throughout Asia, North Africa, Europe and Canada.
by Finian Cunningham
When US President Barack Obama opened his tour of Europe this week it had the unmistakable choreography of a scripted set piece: lights, camera, action etc. The storyline is a familiar trope. America, the shining beacon of democracy and human rights, comes to the rescue of European damsels in distress just before they are ravaged by bestial European recidivism for war.
If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you …”
— “If”, Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936
Everywhere you look in the West, you find political pygmies rather than statesmen. In France, we see a pathetic man whose own people intensely dislike him, François Hollande, attempt to speak as though he were something other than a dry, pompous school teacher-like purveyor of American views. Almost forgotten are the strong, independent voices of a de Gaulle or a Chirac.
A mass protest in Paris on Sunday against French President François Hollande turned into an anti-Jewish demonstration and ended in clashes between police and protesters.
