So how long has France been burning?

The leftwing has brought alot of great ideas into our culture and way of life.
Child labor laws, OSHA, Social Security(Until its funds were misused),Unemployment Insurance, etc...

However, this was the past, the distant past in most cases, and the left now seems to be mentally bankrupt.
So instead of creating great alternatives they are just tearing down.

 

Of course not. What some here in Germany found strange, though, is that on the very first days of the "Katrina" disaster, emergency aid offers from the German government were initially turned down by the US government; the Red Cross here offered help but was told that the only support allowed were donations/transfers to the American Red Cross. Now that changed after a while. But how were we supposed to react to this "we do not want your help" attitude?

May well be true that such aid is more urgently needed in the areas affected by the earthquake in Pakistan/India. May well be true that the US does not actually need any emergency assistance from outside the US in such a case. It's just that those who say so will probably be same who complain about the lack of support from those darn furriners ...

Christian

 

Right, that is what the rioters in France say too. Good to know which side you're on.

Christian

 

Christian, The United States is a rich nation and should not take aid from other nations for there are poorer nations as we know who need it more.

Now did the Bush Adminstration state this in private to nations who offered help.
I do not know.

Now did the Bush Adminstration express this clearly and often so there would be no misunderstandings by the world's public at large.
I think not.
But the Bush Adminstration never did a good job with communicating anything and one of those reasons may be that my President seems to suffer from a Learning Disability that affects his oral communication skills. Is Bush a good person, yes. Can Bush get a message across, no.

As for the people of Germany, I see them all the time visiting my area and they seem positive towards Americans. The Brits are still in many ways cousins with the Americans.
As for the French. It would be interesting to see how they react to this growing problem.
For it seems to me that:
The north africans are not becoming like the French but seem to want France to be an extension of North Africa.

 

"Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete" As reported from Fox news.

 

When you stop and think about it, this may not be so bad after all. At least you would know where they stood on issues and could depend on them to at least admit where they were headed.

 

Any white flags yet?

 

As for what happened in the very first days after Katrina "hit", well, for us over here it is quite unusual to hear No, Thank You when it comes to emergency aid in disaster areas. And I am glad that after a few days foreign help was actually accepted. No doubt about the US being a rich country with a lot of solidarity and readiness to help your countrymen, but that foreign help primarily addressed short term issues. Lots of (domestic) resources will still be needed now and later, and in other US regions affected by natural disasters. What I just find very difficult to deal with is this mindset of "it's always us who helps others while nobody would help us" that one sometimes comes across in the US - that is simply not true.

In France the situation has become very grave, not just because now one person has died because of the riots. The police is in a dilemma - on one hand a tough reaction is expected and required, on the other hand we can imagine what happens if another immigrant gets killed.

Right, many people from North Africa do not integrate very well in France. We have similar problems, with partly different immigrant groups, in other European countries. To some extent that is due to the idea, back in the 1960/70s, that most of them would come to Europe, work here for a couple of years while that extra workforce was needed, and then go back. Hm, did not work out. But even after all these years we still do not have an answer to the question of how these people can integrate and be integrated. The concept of "adapt or die" does not work (well, not with those who already are here), but the pseudo-tolerant "out of sight, out of mind" attitude is not practical either.

Christian

 

Well I can't speak for the president and he is not much of a speaker to begin with but let me as a proud and loyal American Citizen thank the europeans who offered their help over Katrina. Thanks mates.

 

Chris, the one thing that sticks out in my mind is that after two generations, these people are still refered to as "immigrants". Just how long does a person have to live in France to become a Frenchman? Could this be part of France's problem?

 

I think that is starting to happen in the USA too though. My family has dual nationality, and we speak another language primarily. I speak American accented English and it is interesting when you go somewhere speaking in a foreign language, and then again speaking in English and the different treatment you get.

I noticed this especially this July when I was travelling and translating for three Ukrainian guests of our family. We had many problems in airport security. We had issues with airline personel on Untied Airlines, whoops I meant United, maybe Untied is better.

 

Quite possibly so. I tried to address that problem in the last paragraph of my previous reply - in Germany and the Netherlands, for example, these people came because at a certain time additional (inexpensive) workforce was needed. The perspective, both that of the people who already lived here and that of the "guest workers" (this was an official term in Germany for a long time) did initially not have much to do with immigration.

Of course that changed over the years. Many of the "guest workers" stayed, with their families, but never thought about applying for the citizenship of their "host" country. Many of the younger people are the third generation of Turks (in DE) or Moroccans (in NL), for example, that lives here. But they still live between two cultures ...

In France the situation is slightly different because some of the North Africans have been French citizens all the time. (Northern Algeria, for example, did not have the status of a colony before the country's independence but was considered part of the French Republic.) Be it these people or "guest workers"/immigrants from other countries - between their reluctance to adapt and get integrated in Paris or wherever they went, and the host country's reluctance to integrate these people also in terms of education, housing, jobs, etc., quite a lot has gone wrong.

European countries are not "typical" immigration countries. In Germany, for example, citizenship was almost exclusively a matter of "ius sanguinis". That is, if the parents were citizens of country A, that also applies to the child. The "ius soli", ie. if you are born in country B, you are a citizen of B (which is more relevant in countries such as the US) has only been practiced in DE for a few years. Nowadays a child of Turkish parents who have been living here for a couple of years gets dual citizenship and has to choose one at the age of twentysomething.

In a way, this policy acknowledges that these people are not just "guest workers" but do have a long term perspective. Problem is, what happens if by law you are now German (Dutch, French, British ...) but still experience problems with finding a job, a decent home, and so on? They will focus on their peer groups, on "traditional values" which they hope helps them not to "lose their identity", may get more radical ... Currently I think or hope that the situation in Germany is not quite that grave. Then again, we just learned that it does not take much to get from one incident to almost nationwide riots.

Christian

 

I have an observation.

Is it somewhat ironic that France is having to deal with a large minority segment of their population that wants internal independence. This minority group wants a province where Islamic Law would prevail and where non-French leaders would be elected to govern the enclave. They are demanding that French troops and police stay out of "their" ghetto.

Is the separatist situation in Quebec parallel? French Canadians have pushed for political and cultural independence for decades. You have to speak French, yada, yada, yada.

At least our northeastern British rulers had the good sense to ship most of our French-American residents to Louisiana after the French-Indian War. As they say, "Le Bon Ton Roulette".

Oh another thing

Remember when the French tried to topple President Benito Juarez and the fledgling Republic of Mexico. Napolean II led four years of fighting against President Juarez. Four thousand Mexican soldiers smashed the French and an imperialist Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on 5 May 1862. Everyone here celebrates Cinco de Mayo.

This was just a warm up for old Napoleon II. He then had his lunch taken by Count Otto von Bismarck (1815-98) and company in the Franco-Prussian War. The attitude of the French in 1869 was similar to that of today. They wanted to be the top dog in Europe and play international politics ad infinitum. As in 1870, they found themselves outwitted and outflanked by others.

 

Moreso than this recent stuff in France, there has been a long running campaign in Brittany and in Normandie for independance. Then you factor in some of the Basque regions in the south of France. Also up for consideration is Corsica, some nationalists there have resorted to terrorism in their objective.

I guess it is easy from afar to view France as a fairly homogenous population, but it really isn't. There are lots of minorities that are native to France, but linguistically and culturally are not identified with the main French culture.

Similarly in Germany there is a small minority of about a quarter of a million or so people called Sorbians that live in the Eastern part of Germany, they have their own language, culture etc.

In Britain, there are the Gaels, the Welsh, the Manx, the Cornish etc. and there are campaigns in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland for independence from Britain.

In Spain there are the Basque of course, and they have struggled with Spanish domination, especially harsh under the Franco Regime until 1975.

In the USA there are not whole regions of the country that are really that distinctively different from another linguistically or culturally there are differences, but mostly tolerable for all parties, this is not always the case in parts of Europe.

 

I saw on TV that after all this time of rioting France was considering marital law.
We had martial law here a day before the hurricane hit. No problems from a few bad apple insiders or criminal outsiders coming in. I guess Martial law is a good idea from the right. An idea that is needed for short term need. Perhaps the leftist French will embrace it for a week to help contain, control and then end the nonsense.

 

Well, the "leftist" French opposition does not have much influence on what the "rightist" government in France does, and of course the opposition is not exactly happy with how the government has acted so far. (But that is quite normal for any opposition.) They basically agree, though, with the decision to apply the emergency law. The administration can do that for a short period of time (ten days or so) even without parliamentary approval.

The underlying problems, however, cannot be solved this way ...

Christian

 

I thought the right gained some ground but still lost the last major elections in France.
I think the right also spoke of massive deportations of illegals.
Not that I thought they should have won, some of them were way to far to the right, but they did have some ideas that need to be looked at and considered.

 

There are some extreme right and left parties in France too, such as the National Front and the Communist Party. The two major center parties are the Socialists (moderate left) and the UMP (moderate right), and the latter currently is the governing party.

Now I have mentioned before how problematic those "left" and "right" labels are in my opinion. But Chirac's and Sarkozy's UMP is in the same international alliance of conservative parties http://www.idu.org/ as the British Conservatives and the Republicans in the US ...

Christian

 

Well Christian I have to agree with you in the label game on this matter for I would not consider the current French Government as being conservative.
Did they call for marital law yet?
Come on frogs, you have to control your pond or it will turn into a cesspool.

 

Yes, but this law provides some kind of framework only. What is actually necessary is decided upon locally, as far as I know. A couple of cities - Amiens, Orléans, and various suburbs of Paris, for example - are now under partial (depending on a person's age) or total curfew at night. Violators can be imprisoned. Preemptive searches are possible if the police suspects possible use of weapons, and places where rioters met or may meet can be closed. So far about 80 people have been "express sentenced" ...

Christian