France Surrenders...Again

Shocking...I know:

France’s announcement came a day after the release of a tape with a message believed to be from Osama Bin Laden, who threatened to attack French citizens because of their presence in Afghanistan and treatment of Muslims.

Obama so Liberal Even the French Reject His Ideas

This has to set off warning bells with even the most ardent Obamaton. Assuming, of course, they're sober.

Prime Minister François Fillon on Monday rejected demands that the French government seek to stimulate consumer spending, rather than follow his plan to stimulate corporate and infrastructure investment, to lift France out of its economic slump.

"It would be irresponsible to chose another policy, which would increase our country's indebtedness without having more infrastructure and increased competitiveness in the end," Fillon said in a speech in Lyon.

Opponents of the government have been calling for an "Obama-style" stimulus plan, one that puts money directly into the pockets of working people.

Fillon said Monday that Électricité de France would increase investment this year by €2.5 billion to build and renovate new power plants and its grid. GDF Suez, the natural gas and water utility, would lift investment by €200 million.

Crap! Those ideas actually make sense.

Stinky Cheese Threatens Obama's Honeymoon

A crisis of monumental proportions. Obama's response? He went to the gym.

The in-tray of Barack Obama may be piled high, but he might like to put aside the banks, the Middle East and health care to focus on a truly urgent matter: the French cheese emergency.

The new President could blow the great goodwill that he enjoys in France if he fails to reverse a parting shot by George W. Bush against that symbol of Gallic gastronomy -- roquefort cheese. We could even face a new round in the war against Yankee junk food, with Coca Cola and MacDonald's in the firing line.

The story began last Thursday when Washington suddenly tripled an already heavy duty on the pungent blue cheese from the southern Massif Central. The idea was to punish Europe for maintaining a longstanding ban on beef from US cattle that had been administered with growth hormones.[background here] Roquefort had been under a 100 percent retaliatory duty since 1999.

Some in France have been quick to see the new Washington measure as petty, belated revenge against the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" for their opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The Americans slapped new duty on an array of other EU food imports, including fruit, chocolate and chewing gum, but none was subject to the 300 percent reserved for roquefort.

Michel Barnier, the Agriculture Minister, has urged Obama to reverse the roquefort decision and head off another French campaign against the symbols of US fast food. "I hope that he will avoid mediocre little measures like the one just taken against roquefort," Barnier said. France is to protest to the World Trade Organisation.

Philippe Folliot, a centrist MP for the Tarn, near Roquefort village, called for a super-tax against Coca Cola. "I find it especially shocking that the Bush administration, at the end of its term, should take roquefort hostage again," he said.

WHY DID FRANCE FALL IN LOVE WITH McDONALD'S?

Cheeseburger Royale...

Whisper it quietly, but McDonald's is doing rather well in France. In fact, for the last three years "McDo" as the Parisians have it, has posted double-digit growth on average, culminating in profits of around €3bn from 2006-7. So how did the land of cordon bleu come to love the golden arches?

"It has been tough for us to become integrated in the French market," admits Eric Gravier, vice-president, corporate affairs, of McDonald's France. "The focus we had at the beginning was to open more stores and to get suppliers, and we were attacked because we had this image of globalisation."

To dispel this, says Gravier, French McDonald's restaurants have dropped the "flashy yellow and red and lights" and become "a cosy place with nice, warm colours with free wireless, where you might like to stay for an hour."

As well as removing the "fast", McDonald's France has also changed the "food" element. In addition to the familiar Big Macs and french fries (for obvious reasons they're not called french fries in McDo) there are some more Gallic-friendly offerings: salads, local cheeses, yoghurts, fruit compotes and, of course, croques monsieurs. However, it's the Royal Deluxe that Gravier says sums up the way the McDonald's concept has been translated so successfully into French.

"It's not a gourmet burger but it's a big slice of beef with an old-fashioned mustard sauce, which is stronger than the standard English or American sauces and closer to the traditional French mustard tastes. It was only introduced as a test, but it's never been off the menu and it's second only to the Big Mac now."

So there you have it, if you want to make a splash in the French food market, beef up your mustard.

OBAMA GOES TO FRANCE: DOESN'T SPEAK FRENCH

You might remember this from a couple of weeks ago:

While campaigning in Georgia, the Illinois senator had called for Americans to learn more foreign languages.

"It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German," he had said. "And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is 'merci beaucoup.'"

So Obama goes to Paris, and he doesn't speak French. The douchebag embarrassed the whole country.

SEMTEX EXPLOSIVE MISSING FROM FRANCE

Nice job frogs.

French anti-terrorist officers are searching for 28kg (61lb) of Semtex explosive missing from a depot in the suburbs of the city of Lyon.

France's interior ministry confirmed an investigation was underway, saying the manager of the site had been suspended.

Semtex is a powerful explosive favoured by terrorist groups as it is odourless and difficult to detect.

Police said detonators were also missing and that they are treating the theft "very seriously".

Semtex, which was first made in the Czech Republic, is used in mining and demolition work.

A bomb containing about half a kilogram of the explosive caused the blast which brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people.

NOW THE TERRORISTS ARE GOING AFTER PORN

Well, if you were sitting on the fence before, I bet you're not now.

Anti-terrorism investigators in Paris have opened a preliminary investigation into the threats of an attack against cable TV broadcaster Canal+. The threats came in order to stop broadcasting pornographic movies to North Africa.

The broadcaster received an anonymous letter at the end of June from somebody who said he was Muslim and threatened to blow up the Canal+ headquarters near Paris. Canal+ filed a complaint. The letter warns Canal+ to stop broadcasting its monthly pornographic movies, as they can be received in North Africa and the Middle East by satellite.

MEMO TO SELF: NEVER PLACE MY RESCUE IN THE HANDS OF THE FRENCH

Bless their little hearts:

16 Accidentally Wounded by French Military in Shooting Demo

Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old child, Bernard Lemaire, chief of the regional administration in Aude, said on France-3 television. Fifteen of the injured were civilians.

A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks. The official said investigators will look into why real bullets were used.

No information was immediately available about what kind of weapon was used.

The soldier who fired the shots has been detained, Lemaire said. He said the injuries were likely an accident but that it could have been a "criminal act."

In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "horror" at Sunday's incident at the base, which houses the 3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.

The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, with the most seriously wounded taken to Toulouse.

FRANCE: MUSLIM WOMEN SEEK CERTIFICATES OF VIRGINITY

This ranks right up there with the beating certificates that are being handed out in Zimbabwe:

The surgery in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 self-dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.

But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, she had a "hymenoplasty," a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity before marriage.

That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.

All this nonsense because Muslim men are sick, immature and jealous psychopaths.

MUSLIM RACISTS HUMILIATE WHITE FRENCH PEOPLE

Granted, they only did this to a woman and a boy. But given the performance of French men in the past, I'm not sure the outcome would have been different. Fight you frogs...Fight!

FRENCH ARMY HAS COLLAPSED

I wasn't sure they still had an army. Apparently, they do. But it's not so well off.

According to confidential defence documents leaked to the French press, less than half of France's Leclerc tanks – 142 out of 346 – are operational and even these regularly break down.

Less than half of its Puma helicopters, 37 per cent of its Lynx choppers and 33 per cent of its Super Frelon models – built 40 years ago – are in a fit state to fly, according to documents seen by Le Parisien newspaper.

Two thirds of France's Mirage F1 reconnaissance jets are unusable at present.

The disclosure comes just ten days before President Nicolas Sarkozy announces a major reform of the armed forces, with a defence white paper outlining France's military priorities for the next 15 years.

He is expected to argue that the situation can only improve by reducing the number of France's operational troops from 50,000 to 30,000, and its fighter aircraft, as well as closing military bases.

He will also use the occasion to push for greater military integration in Europe, an issue that France will highlight when it takes over the EU's six-month rotating presidency in July.

Meanwhile, the Germans are massing on the border.

D-DAY: IN PHOTOS

Never forget:

SUPER WHACKY MUSLIM FUN TIME: I DON'T FEEL NO WAYS TIRED

My journey through Islam and the Middle East continues...Here's some things I learned last week...

A debate has been sparked in France after a court annulled a Muslim marriage because the husband said his wife was not a virgin as she had claimed. In the case, Mr X, an engineer in his 30s, married Ms Y, a student nurse in her 20s. But on the wedding night, Mr X complained that he could not display the blood-stained sheet held as proof of a bride's 'purity' and went to court the following morning to get an annulment. His lawyer successfully argued that Ms Y had deceived him on one of the "essential elements of the marriage", which has nothing to do with religion...If the sheet don't feet, you must acqueet.

Muslim leaders in Kenya's North Eastern Province have declared war on condoms to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV...I hope those condoms don't fall for the ol' Trojan horse trick.

Amnesty International has urged Saudi authorities to release a Saudi university professor who is facing flogging and imprisonment for meeting a woman to whom he is not related for coffee in the conservative Islamic kingdom...Yes, but was the coffee made from a 100% Arabica beans?

Polygamy in the U.S. is not limited to remote enclaves in the West or breakaway sects once affiliated with the Mormon Church. Several scholars say it's growing among black Muslims in the inner city — and particularly in Philadelphia, which is known for its large orthodox black Muslim community....Fantastic! These guys can't take care of one family and they're taking on another?

Staff at a UK top-security prison appear frightened inmates and are concerned that Muslim prisoners are taking control of the wings, according to an internal review...Just close your eyes...It will go away.

Join me next week for another fun-filled episode of Super Whacky Muslim Fun Time...

THE COUPLE WHO HUNTED VIRGINS

French gothic...

Michel Fourniret, a diminutive, bespectacled man, was dubbed the "Ogre of Ardennes" for the crimes he committed alongside his grey-haired wife, Monique.

He has been found guilty of murdering seven girls and women aged between 12 and 22 from 1987 onwards. By his own admission, however, he has killed more - strangling, shooting or stabbing his victims with a screwdriver.

From their chateau on the forested border region between France and Belgium the pair would head out in their small van, sometimes with their baby son in the vehicle, looking for victims.

Monique Oliver and Michel Fourniret had signed a criminal pact: she pledged to help him find the young women he sought; he, in return, promised that he would kill her former husband.

But only Monique carried out her role, presenting the picture of domesticity that lured young women into trusting the couple.

Prosecutors said Fourniret was "obsessed" with virgins. Monique, meanwhile, defended her actions, saying her husband manipulated and terrified her. "The fear was constant, it lived within me" she told the court.

The 66-year-old Fourniret, a forest warden, first made contact with Monique while he was in detention, awaiting trial for a sex crime. He is reported to have placed an advert in a Catholic magazine for a pen-pal. She replied and they began a correspondence. When he left prison, in 1987, they moved in together in a house in the south of Paris, before later purchasing the castle surrounded by woods in France's Ardennes region, near the border with Belgium.

The killing spree began just two months after Fourniret was released. Monique reportedly later told police that her role had been to "hunt virgins" for her husband.

Travelling in their van, the couple approached 17-year-old Isabelle Laville, who was on her way home from school. Under the pretence of asking her directions, they managed to persuade her to travel with them to show them the way. Her remains were found at the bottom of a well almost two decades later.

A year later, 20-year-old Fabienne Leroy was seized from a supermarket car park east of Paris. Her body was found near a military base the day after she disappeared. She had been shot in the chest.

The bodies of Fourniret's other victims - all of whom he admitted to killing but denies raping - were found in the grounds of his chateau, on a beach or deep in the forest.

Fourniret was discovered when, in 2003, a 13-year-old girl he attempted to abduct managed to escape. She managed to bite her way through the ropes around her wrists and flee, having the presence of mind to make a note of his registration number.

CHARITY BOXES ROBBED BY IMMIGRANTS IN FRANCE

Tolerance is so 90s.

JULIUS CAESER FOUND AT BOTTOM OF FRENCH RIVER

France is a strange place to find a man who liked to fight.

He was a military leader turned dictator who had such a complex about his receding hairline that he perfected the Roman comb-over and liked laurel crowns that disguised his bald patch.

In flattering posthumous portraits Julius Caesar was often portrayed as a dashing, healthy-haired, divine being. But now a realistic marble bust believed to be the oldest representation taken during his lifetime has been discovered at the bottom of the river Rhône in France.

The life-sized bust, which has thrilled French archaeologists, shows a man in his fifties with the receding hair said to have given him a complex after taunts from his battlefield enemies.

He also has wrinkles and lines that reflect the war-hardened life of the man who conquered Gaul and whose quest for power was largely responsible for turning the Roman republic into a dictatorship that would later become an empire.

The riddle that remains is why the bust ended up at the bottom of the river in the town dubbed "Little Rome in Gaul".

And they say there are no real men in France.

CHINESE ANTI-FRENCH BOYCOTT FALLS FLAT

It looks like China's protests are as crappy as the products they export.

They came. They expressed patriotic fervor. Then they shopped.

On Thursday, the first day of a planned boycott against Carrefour, a French retail chain here, there were a few low-key protests around the country, but many Carrefour outlets did a healthy business in peanut oil, petit fours and family packs of litchi juice.

BRIGITTE BARDOT ON TRIAL FOR INSULTING MUSLIMS

In what can only be seen as yet another monumental surrender by France, it appears they have, without firing a shot in their defense, given up their right to free speech.

"Brigitte Bardot went on trial in a Paris court yesterday, charged with "inciting racial hatred" over remarks in a letter to the French president Nicholas Sarkozy. The 73-year-old former actor did not attend the court in person, claiming that she was physically unwell.

Bardot, a vocal animal rights campaigner, wrote to the French president last year, complaining about the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The festival traditionally involves the slaughter of a sheep. "I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," she wrote. The letter was later published by Bardot's foundation.

It is the fifth time that Bardot has been charged with inciting racial hatred. She has previously railed against what she termed "the Islamisation of France" and claimed that the nation was being invaded by "sheep-slaughtering Muslims", comments that have led to her being fined four times since 1997.
Prosecutor Anne de Fontette is pushing for a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros (£12,100). "I am a little tired of prosecuting Ms Bardot," she told the court.

The verdict is expected in a few weeks.

Bardot on trial

Leave it to France to throw the greatest export it ever had to the wolves.
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HEY L. LI-CHING WANG! TELL YOUR PEOPLE TO CHILL OUT

Chinese consumers have been urged to boycott French goods in response to the raucous protests that accompanied the Olympic torch through Paris.

The appeal, circulated on internet chatrooms and bulletin boards, indicates the protests earlier this week have not only embarrassed the Beijing government, but also ignited a strong nationalist reaction among sections of the Chinese public.

Chinese Urged to Boycott French Goods

Tell em that "humility and compassion, not hypocrisy and self-righteousness, is what is needed." You tell em' Wang. That is if the Chinese government will let you.

And while you're at it, maybe you want to remind these "Chinese-Americans" they're actually Americans and that maybe they might not want to be waving Communist China flags on the streets of an American city. Tell them the buzz words..."humility and compassion"...and teach em' about "assimilation" while you're at it.