So, trading with Saddam is bad, but trading with Pinochet or Mobutu is ok?
Quote: During a state visit by Mobutu in 1983, Reagan praised the Zairian strongman as "a voice of good sense and goodwill".
So, trading with Saddam is bad, but trading with Pinochet or Mobutu is ok?
Quote: During a state visit by Mobutu in 1983, Reagan praised the Zairian strongman as "a voice of good sense and goodwill".
"Quote: During a state visit by Mobutu in 1983, Reagan praised the Zairian strongman as "a voice of good sense and goodwill"."
Reagan was an evil whore much of the time. He also called the Niucaraguan Contra terrorists, made up of mostly of old death squads and criminals and such, "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers".
Reagan was an evil whore much of the time. He also called the Niucaraguan Contra terrorists, made up of mostly of old death squads and criminals and such, "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers".
well said. It's the kind of lack of logic that libs like maher demonstrate that make it so easy for them to step on their own feet.
Kind of ironic, they don't want the flaws pointed out of another country, while at the same time admonishing our country and ignoring the good things directly attributed to it.
It'd be interesting to see Maher point out the best things about America...like all libs, maybe he can't do it, as libs depend on doom and gloom to get their point across.
CanOWorms is living in his personal world... for the last 3 years I've seen him always posting exactly the same line, no matter what...
He believes in many funny things, among them that Europe is very close to starting a world war and that France organized the Rwanda civil war.
It's actually quite funny to see him predicting every time a far-right parties surge in Europe... while in fact they have plummeted to record lows in almost every EU country...
Red Dawn
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- Jun 4, 2001
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He's a Hindu with a hard on for Euros.Originally posted by: Tango
CanOWorms is living in his personal world... for the last 3 years I've seen him always posting exactly the same line, no matter what...
He believes in many funny things, among them that Europe is very close to starting a world war and that France organized the Rwanda civil war.
It's actually quite funny to see him predicting every time a far-right parties surge in Europe... while in fact they have plummeted to record lows in almost every EU country...
Don't be so naive.
Rwanda is investigating France's role in the genocide, claiming that the French government knowingly armed and provided an escape route for the genocidal extremists.
An officer in the French army stated that French soldiers trained Rwandan militias in the two years leading to the genocide.
A representative at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said that the court has heard evidence of France's involvement.
Survivors of the genocide saw French soldiers participate in the genocide, allowing genocidal maniacs to enter camps where refugees were, putting refugees in helicopters and tossing them out.
A civilian investigatory panel made up of lawyers, historians and leaders of human rights groups issued a 600-page report alleging that French forces helped the attackers more than the victims.
Workers with humanitarian organizations such as French humanitarian group Medecins du Monde, said French forces "protected the killers and gave them weapons."
European Court of Human Rights (a joke), the UN, and human rights organizations have blasted France for its sheltering of Rwandan genocidal criminals and its refusal to cooperate on a meaningful level.
The list just goes on and on. What little world are you living in?
It's actually quite funny to see him predicting every time a far-right parties surge in Europe... while in fact they have plummeted to record lows in almost every EU country...
Think about it. The far-right will lose supporters as the mainstream parties adopt their ideals. The recent election in France is the perfect example. I've been saying this for quite some time. It doesn't matter if far-right extremist parties vanish in Europe if the mainstream adops their values. Are you denying that Europe is taking a turn towards the far-right when it comes to values such as immigration, minorities, etc? This has been happening for YEARS.
I just don't understand how someone can talk about France and not mention their biggest, recent foreign policy blunder. If you're talking about the US, you would have to mention Iraq. If you're talking about France, you must mention Rwanda.
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Don't be so naive.
Rwanda is investigating France's role in the genocide, claiming that the French government knowingly armed and provided an escape route for the genocidal extremists.
An officer in the French army stated that French soldiers trained Rwandan militias in the two years leading to the genocide.
A representative at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said that the court has heard evidence of France's involvement.
Survivors of the genocide saw French soldiers participate in the genocide, allowing genocidal maniacs to enter camps where refugees were, putting refugees in helicopters and tossing them out.
A civilian investigatory panel made up of lawyers, historians and leaders of human rights groups issued a 600-page report alleging that French forces helped the attackers more than the victims.
Workers with humanitarian organizations such as French humanitarian group Medecins du Monde, said French forces "protected the killers and gave them weapons."
European Court of Human Rights (a joke), the UN, and human rights organizations have blasted France for its sheltering of Rwandan genocidal criminals and its refusal to cooperate on a meaningful level.
The list just goes on and on. What little world are you living in?
It's actually quite funny to see him predicting every time a far-right parties surge in Europe... while in fact they have plummeted to record lows in almost every EU country...
Think about it. The far-right will lose supporters as the mainstream parties adopt their ideals. The recent election in France is the perfect example. I've been saying this for quite some time. It doesn't matter if far-right extremist parties vanish in Europe if the mainstream adops their values. Are you denying that Europe is taking a turn towards the far-right when it comes to values such as immigration, minorities, etc? This has been happening for YEARS.
I just don't understand how someone can talk about France and not mention their biggest, recent foreign policy blunder. If you're talking about the US, you would have to mention Iraq. If you're talking about France, you must mention Rwanda.
Every 6 months we have the same discussion. It's ok, because you are one nice interlocutor, but sometimes I really wonder where your blind hate for anybody living in the European continent come from. It must be something personal, because intellectually there nothing justifying such a one-sided position.
Anyway, let's talk about Rwanda:
The French intelligence had credible reason to think something like this could happen. True. The Us intelligence also had similar reports. The British intelligence also. Any journalist operating in the area knew it could have been the case. You didn't have to be a genius: since the RPF began organizing resistance using Tanzania bases tension began escalating, 4 years before violence finally erupted.
The canadian general Dellaire commanding UNAMIR had presented on many occasions evidence violence could explode in Rwanda. After Somalia no country in the world was interested in sending troops to Africa, so the UN avoided the embarrassment of voting a resolution increasing UNAMIR presence and then seeing how no country would commit troops to the operation.
France trained the Hutu militia. Wrong. France legally trained the Rwanda regular army, which of course was Hutu led. Rwanda had open military training agreements with France since the end of the colonial rule in the country.
The rest is conspiracy theories. The weapons used in the massacre came from three countries, none of which being in France. In fact, firearms came mainly from Israeli and British companies, and the infamous machetes were bought from a private Chinese company.
Similar conspiracy theories about Rwanda include direct US involvement, all the way down to CIA planning and executing Habyarimana's murder. Personally I don't believe anything of this. Truth is no country had interest in committing troops in such an explosive situation.
French soldiers had direct involvement in the massacre. Pretty weird idea if you consider that French soldiers of UNAMIR were castrated and had their genitalia put in their mouths till they chocked. Maybe you think they did this themselves?
French soldiers protected the Hutus. True. After the Tutsi RPF army took Kigali the french troops of Operation Turquoise were ordered to keep the Hutus fleeing to Congo divided from the Tutsi that had invaded Rwanda from Tanzania. This explains why many tutsi after the genocide felt they had been protected. They wanted (understandably) revenge and this was denied to them as western troops interposed between the two ethnic armies.
Violence continued inside the "free-heavens" controlled by operation turquoise. True. Both UNAMIR and the turquoise central command had asked up to 10 times more troops to be able to control the violence in the area. They were denied additional troops and this was the result.
A lot of humanitarian organizations including Medicins-sans-frontiers, the Red Cross and Emergency reported violence inside their compounds they were unable to stop for lack of military personnel
Interestingly, the efforts leading to the French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda came from... France. Without the French NGO Survie no parliamentary commission would have been established.
Question: have you read the results of the commission? You can find them here:
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dossiers/rwanda/r1271.asp
I did. As you know I was in Rwanda a couple of years after the genocide and when I was still working in media I had several friends covering the trials, including a Reuters journalist who was in the country during the genocide and was called to testify.
What operation Turquoise did was preventing a counter-genocide. Would you have preferred that Tutsi had their revenge?
The problem was that the world stood still and did not act fast enough to prevent the first one genocide, not that it prevented a second one and did not allow a Tutsi revenge.
The personal accounts you talk about aren't backed by any evidence. If you are interested I personally talked to people in Rwanda who told me that the devil himself was present during the killings. Should we investigate on this too?
Charges were pressed, and convictions made, on many people and organizations guilty of having helped the Hutus, including the Rwandan Roman catholic church. Yet for some reason you think the French government was behind this all, and no evidence is available. If you ask me, this would be pretty strange, isn't it?
The genocide in Rwanda was terrible, and it showed how the supposedly civilized west can really care nothing about what happens in distant places like Rwanda, when natural resources are not involved. If anything it should have been the case-study to finally equip the UN with that independent standing army it was supposed to have since the beginning, and yet it still doesn't have because it would hurt the superpowers' hegemony on the use of force.
If you have evidence that the French army participated in the killings, please contact the commission investigating on this and present your material. Because until now, no such evidence has been presented. But if you are not able to provide such material, your conspiracy theories show just the same intellectual dishonesty and racism you think Europeans are guilty of.
I have absolutely no problem discussing the episodes where European peace corps behaved in criminal ways, for example Italian troops in Somalia, Belgian troops in Congo and French troops in Zaire. For Rwanda there is simply no evidence of such a thing.
On the right-wing parties:
You don't know what you talk about. I live 4 months every year in Europe and if anything the trend is exactly the opposite of what you describe. For the first time a few countries actually implemented affirmative action for minorities. Things like the name-less resume policy in France are diametrically opposite to what you think is happening. The fact that a center-right candidate like Sarkozy run his campaign on things like affirmative action for admission in the Grandes Ecoles or jobs actually presents evidence of left-wing policies infiltrating the right, not the other way around. Meanwhile Zapatero in Spain and Prodi in Italy both have significantly made easier to immigrate in the their countries, including citizenship after 5 years of residence in Italy. Far-right parties have been in a dramatic downward trend for 15 years now. In 1990 people like Le Pen, Bossi or Heider used to take home as much as 15% votes. Now they are all down to single digits, and in some cases they just completely disappeared from the political scene.
The problem I have with you is that you simply state your opinions without providing a single example of what you are talking about. If you do we could have a much more interesting debate.
Don't take things so personally. You are not the French or another European government.
Umm.. of course they did because they had a role in it.
French soldiers have claimed that they trained militia. Note that I never refer to France's close relations to the actual Rwandan government even though that is damning as well.
They are considered conspiracy theories by history revisionists. Interesting how you don't mention France's plane load of arms confiscated by UNAMIR.
You're not really refuting anything I said. Thanks for your opinions I guess?
No, what it did was protect their genocidal allies.
No evidence? The list is huge, I've only provided a little bit. Do you honestly think that France can be somehow charged over this? The US hasn't faced any charges over any of its misadventures. I guess they didn't happen too!
Members of the commission have already stated that there is enough to link France to the genocide.
There's no evidence if you refuse to look at it.
You don't know what you talk about either I guess. Your anectodal evidence has place next to polls and studies.
You are a fool if you think that Sarkozy's campaign was solely based on affirmative action. When the Socialist candidate refers to far-right ideas, it's quite obvious that far-right ideals have infiltrated into the mainstream. Sarkozy poached Le Pen's voters. Spain and other countries have made gains on basic minority rights, immigration, etc. but they are only one of many more countries who have gone berserk in their grasp of far-right ideals. Italy may have gone one step forward, but then they went one step backwards in their treatment of the Chinese.
I repeatedly provide links before yet you just post a block of meaningless text.
France's involvement in the genocide is a fact. The only thing left to doubt is the level of their participating. My belief is that they were involved at the deepest and highest levels. You have some fairy-tale version.
USA has 4.8% unemployment and 12% of the population below the poverty line.
France has 8.7% unemployment and 6.2% of the population below the poverty line.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html (Look it up)
I would rather not be living in poverty regardless of whether I'm employed or not, thank you.
Would you prefer to be "employed and living in poverty" or "unemployed and not living in poverty"?
Don't bother waiting for ProfJohn to respond...
Sending chemical weapons to dictators like Saddam and illegal arms to Iran is ok as long as you're a Republican President.
Supporting dictators like Pinochet and Mobutu is ok as long as you're a Republican President.
I posted you the link to the commission's paper. For some reason you think France was directly involved in the Rwanda genocide. If you cared to link the text you would know no such evidence has been proved during the commission's research. This is a fact. Your is an opinion.
Again, if you have evidence I invite you to present it, so that justice will be finally made.
And I've posted dozens of links that have more substantial information than a French government paper. I heard that the CIA has a paper that there are WMD in Iraq, too.
Justice will probably never be made in a case like this. What do you think can happen?
ProfJohn
Lifer
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So explain to me the massive riots that hit France last year?
If it is such a great place why was everyone burning cars?
Also, the poverty rate in France is affected by the amount of social welfare someone gets, if you get enough from the government you are not considered to be living in poverty.
However, in the US welfare programs are not used in determining if you are in poverty or not. So no mater how much help you get from the government you are still considered to be living in poverty if you make below a certain amount of money.
I imagine if you took the very generous French welfare system out of the equation that poverty in France would skyrocket.
ProfJohn
Lifer
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I am not 100% positive, but that is what my reading leads me to believe.
I do know that it is not included in the US figures.
" The official poverty measure counts only monetary income. It considers antipoverty programs such as food stamps, housing assistance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid and school lunches, among others, "in-kind benefits" -- and hence not income. So, despite everything these programs do to relieve poverty, they aren't counted as income when Washington measures the poverty rate. "
and
"A 2006 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives reported that if in-kind benefits are included in income, poverty rates in 2003 would have declined from 12.7 percent to 9.9 percent. "
In 2002 we spent $418 billion on programs to help the poor.
Finally, think about this: If France has double our unemployment rate, how can their poverty rate be lower than ours? Furthermore, how can their poverty rate be lower than their unemplyoment rate?
If someone out there can read French they can go to wikipedia and follow the source articles and clear this up for us.
Well, those would be possible, respectively, if the cost of living was lower, and if the average length of time unemployed was low enough not drive one below the poverty line (individuals are going in and out of the unemployment constantly). I doubt the first one is the case. As for the second, I know that Europeans save way more than Americans, so it's possible they would be able to stay afloat on cash reserves. Also, as you noted, not every government necessary calculates their statistics the same way.
Edit: The country with an absurd unemployment rate is the UK. I think the CIA had it as 2.6%, wtf?? Apparently, The World Factbook doesn't exist at the moment; maybe it's a terrorist plot!
Europe will always have higher unemployment rate for two reasons:
a) They calculate unemployment in a different way. You ignored my previous post with data from 2003 when France had both higher unemployment rate and higher employment rate. If you read a little bit on how they compute the stat you'll understand how this is possible.
b) Structural labor markets differences. Europe has more rigid labor markets. As the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem predicts, increased competition in unskilled-labor intensive goods' markets affect in different ways developed countries depending on their labor markets policies.
In the US, it creates income inequality as unskilled labor demand drops. To remain competitive firms in unskilled-labor intensive markets cut wages or move their operations to foreign countries where labor costs are lower.
In Europe they cannot do it. Minimum wage is very high and firing in either impossible or very expensive. So in the long run firms simply do not replace workers retiring, and this creates unemployment.
The other significant difference is that european welfare benefits shift the wage-leisure equilibrium, so that people tend to remain unemployed for longer periods before starting to look for a new job.
Because of this, frictional unemployment in big EU countries is usually thought to be as high as 6%.
They were about racism, not about unemployment. The spark that ignited the riots was a magazine research showing that applicants to the same jobs having an arab name were much less likely to be called for an interview.
That's why now it's illegal in France to write your name, address or ethnicity in your resume.
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