"Tensions flare in France over veil ban" by Edward Cody | Washington Post, August 12, 2012
MARSEILLE, France — The confrontation quickly escalated into a shoving match, with several dozen young bystanders joining in and carloads of police reinforcements speeding in to lend a hand. Before long it erupted into what was described in the National Assembly in Paris as a riot, during which a female police officer was bitten on the arm and two of her male colleagues were bashed and bruised.
The sudden clash, which took place July 24 in Marseille, was the most serious instance of resistance to the veil ban during its 16 months of enforcement, according to police. Although it subsided almost as quickly as it flared, the outburst focused national attention on simmering resentment over the ban among France’s most militant and tradition-minded Muslims.
I was going to ask why it took over three weeks to be reported here, but the second sentence answered by question.
Related: Putting a Veil Over France
I'm about to put one over my Globe's because I'm tired of divisive distractions.
Although complaining about what they call ‘‘stigmatization,’’ France’s mainstream Muslim organizations have recognized the ban as the law of the land and called on followers to heed it. Most have gone along. But the makeshift Grand Sunna Mosque, police noted, has acquired a reputation as a home for the city’s more radical preachers, over whom the moderate national groups have little sway and whose followers are eager to affirm their Muslim identity.
‘‘For young militants, this ban upsets them,’’ said Nassera Benmarnia, who heads the local Muslim Family Union. ‘‘But most people just want to be left alone.’’
I think that is a universal desire, yeah.
A middle-aged man behind the counter of a busy shawarma shop, with recordings of plaintive Koranic verse playing in the background, agreed. Between handing out sandwiches, he explained that most French Muslims see no need for a full-face veil, but that for some, it is the response to a ‘‘Muslim taboo,’’ forbidding the display of a woman’s beauty outside her family.
France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population, is the only country with a national ban against full-face veils, usually called a niqab. The law has been supported across the political spectrum in Paris.
You see, it's okay to be a racist, prejudiced, or sexist if you are the state.
But the State Department, in an annual report on religious freedom, recently criticized it for the second time as an infringement on freedom of choice.
For once the State Department takes a position of which I can be proud.
Belgium’s lower house of Parliament has passed similar anti-veil legislation, and the government hopes to get the law validated soon in the Senate. The Dutch government has said it also would seek to impose a ban next year. Meanwhile, some Belgian cities, including Brussels, the capital, have already enacted bans at the municipal level.
Yeah, THESE VEILED WOMEN that represent such a slim minority are a THREAT to your society and civilization -- NOT the LOOTING BANKSTERS and COMPLICIT POLITICIANS that put you in this mess!
Sorry, but that has been soooooo played in the Jewish press.
The bans reflect Western Europe’s unease at growing Muslim minorities, which sometimes are numerous enough to retain their own dress and customs in what can appear to be a challenge to the continent’s Christian roots and traditions. The chafing has intensified during Europe’s economic crisis....
Pun intended or.... ?
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I was thinking that maybe the French should be more worried about the womanizing thieves and rapists that populate their economic sphere, but that's just me.
Other deadly women in France:
"French president’s image as ‘Mr. Normal’ takes a hit" by Thomas Adamson | Associated Press, July 14, 2012
PARIS — A feud involving the French president’s live-in girlfriend, his former partner, and his eldest son may have tarnished the new leader’s carefully cultivated image as ‘‘Mr. Normal’’ — credited with helping him win the spring election among a populace weary of his flashy predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Or they thought they were moving away from the ruthless policies of austerity promoted by the the EU by electing a "leftist" -- whatever that means now.
They were also President Francois Hollande is expected to break his silence about the family feud, which has riveted the media, during a television interview Saturday — tradition-steeped Bastille Day, when a military parade and an interview by the chief of state about French policy at home and abroad is standard.
No offense, but who gives a s***?
That he has agreed to answer questions about what is really on everyone’s mind is a sign that in the Twitter era, even French leaders can’t keep their private lives private. And that is the problem.
The presidential Elysee Palace on Friday confirmed reports that Hollande would talk about ‘‘tweetgate,’’ as the media call the affair, if — as is almost certain — he is asked about it during the TF1 broadcast.
I guess France doesn't have any real problems like unemployment or troops in foreign war zones, 'eh?
A tweet last month during legislative elections by Hollande’s companion Valerie Trierweiler in support of the political opponent of his former partner Segolene Royal caused a scandal.
Royal — the mother of the president’s four children — was defeated in her bid for a parliamentary seat.
The tweet was all it took to set the French political establishment aflame and turn the president’s image on its head.
Are you French as sick as I am of bulls*** imagery and illusion?
Widely criticized as a vindictive move, the tweet went viral and dominated news shows....
Your media is almost as bad as ours.
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"French President Francois Hollande is terse on ‘tweetgate’" Associated Press, July 15, 2012
PARIS — President Francois Hollande agreed to take a question Saturday about a family feud that has turned his ultra-discreet image on its head, saying he still hopes to keep his private life private.
I hope he does to.
Also see: Richard Dawson is Dead
That's what I think of when I think of a family feud.
Midway through a nationally televised interview on tradition-steeped Bastille Day, reporters asked for his reaction to ‘‘tweetgate,’’ as the feud is known.
Hollande answered but shut down the discussion. He said he intended to keep his public and private lives separate and has asked those close to him to do the same.
‘‘I am for a clear distinction between public life and private life, and so I consider that private affairs should be sorted out in private,’’ he said in the interview.
So he didn't really answer the question.
But extensive media attention given to the scandal suggests that it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Hollande defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in May’s presidential election in large part because French voters grew tired of Sarkozy’s very public private life, political pundits have said.
The scandal began with a tweet sent out by Hollande’s live-in companion Valerie Trierweiler during last month’s legislative elections. The message expressed support for the political opponent of his former partner Segolene Royal, the mother of the president’s four children, who was defeated in her bid for a parliamentary seat.
Widely criticized as a vindictive move, the tweet went viral and dominated news shows. The action angered Hollande and his children, who are now engaged in damage control.
Since the scandal broke, Trierweiler has been spotted by the side of Hollande in a clear show of unity. Hollande allowed diners to take photographs during a dinner with her at a Paris restaurant on Wednesday night.
Am I to understand this guy has never married these women?
Trierweiler was also accompanying the president in engagements this weekend and next week. On Saturday, she was in the front row of a grandstand set up to watch the Bastille Day military parade, though, like the companions of other French dignitaries, she did not sit next to her partner.
Bastille Day marks the July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille prison by angry Paris crowds that helped spark the French Revolution.
Yeah, I guess I can see why my corporate AmeriKan paper wouldn't want to focus on that. No need to give Americans any ideas.
Military jets opened the parade, which included military units, tanks, bagpipes, dressage, and the Marseillaise. Jumpers with tricolor parachutes ended the parade, thumping down on Paris’s famed Champs-Elysees.
Ah, a wonderful display of state militarism in this time of austerity.
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Speaking of French militarism:
"President Francois Hollande of France said that, after more than a decade in Afghanistan, French combat troops had carried out their mission and it was time for them to leave.... About 1,400 French soldiers will stay."
Then they are not really leaving, are they? Is that what the French people want?
PARIS — Disability groups in France are calling for a boycott of some Babybel cheese following accusations that a promotional summer toy insults the mentally ill.
Toy inkpads featuring the term ‘‘Mentally ill holidays’’ were included as gifts throughout July in bags of Mini Babybel, the round cheese with the iconic red wax coating.
In using the slogan ‘‘des vacances de malade mental,’’ Babybel seized on the youth slang expression ‘‘malade mental,’’ which means ‘‘extraordinary.’’
Babybel later admitted the slogan was not properly thought out.
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Also see:
France’s PSA Peugeot-Citroen slashing 8,000 jobs
France plans to save car industry by going green
Rude surprise: French fed up with their incivility
Deaths spur French gov’t to pay for shark hunt
France presses Google on privacy
France will open archives of ’42 Jewish deportation
I'm not opening them; you can if you want, readers.
