France Goes Smart For Socialist Government--Unopposed To Credible Change!

[ekrem]

Greece has many problems (corruption being one of the greatest). But it was perfectly up to standards to become an EU-member (not to become a member of the eurozone, which is part of the problem now).

When was the last year Belgium complied with €'s Maastricht Criteria (Less than 3% budget-deficit and less than 60% debt-to-GDP ratio) ?

Since introduction of € Belgium violated Maastricht each year.
You never even complied to the criteria. If Greece shouldn't have become €-zone member so shouldn't have Belgium.

 

[Political Junky]

On Friday, the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is supporting Mr. Hollande for the final round of voting, said on France-Inter radio that Mr. Sarkozy used language “directly taken from the collaboration” of Vichy France with Nazi Germany. He was referring to Mr. Sarkozy’s speech the day before in the suburb of Le Raincy, in which he spoke of his admiration of the police and said, “To be treated as a Fascist by a Communist is a compliment.”

Mr. Mélenchon called it “a restatement, word for word, of Pierre Laval,” referring to the French collaborationist and prime minister under Vichy. Similarly, when Mr. Sarkozy spoke of “real work” (“vrai travail&#8221, contrasting it with those who received state salaries and assistance, Mr. Mélenchon invoked the chief of the Vichy state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, saying it was “word for word the text of a poster of Marshal Pétain in 1941.”
The Communist newspaper L’Humanité piled on, printing the president’s photograph next to that of Pétain, who was convicted of treason after World War II.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/w...nd-sarkozy-trade-insults-as-runoff-nears.html

 

[Political Junky]

Europe’s far right marches on - Salon.com

From France to Norway, the far right is at its greatest strength since World War II
BY STEVE WEISSMAN AND FRANK BROWNING

Marine Le Pen, who put a friendly smile on her father’s neo-fascist National Front, has become “the third man” in French politics and could now determine whether the center-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy or the center-left Socialist François Hollande becomes the country’s next president. Geert Wilders, the golden-haired leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, has just brought down the right-wing coalition government that he had supported. And in an Oslo courtroom, Anders Behring Breivik fights to prove he was sane last July when he systematically slaughtered 77 innocent people, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp. He was, he explains, simply trying to spark a crusade against multiculturalism, “cultural Marxism” and Muslims living in Europe.

Le Pen, the “right-wing liberal” Wilders and the unbelievably weird Breivik differ in crucial ways, but they reflect the range and varied thrust of Europe’s far right, which is showing its greatest strength since World War II. All three have given up yesterday’s Jew-baiting, at least in public, and proudly proclaim their support of Israel. They all target Muslims as a major source of Europe’s current woes, preaching a white European nationalism that is largely Christian and intolerant of immigrants and other outsiders. And they all feed on a popular backlash against the European Union and Eurozone and the failure of mainstream leaders to provide any sense of hope at a time of crippling economic crisis.

“Vive Hitler”

Far and away the most important, Marine Le Pen often appears as little more than a right-wing populist seeking protest votes. But this ignores who she is, where she comes from and why she has never disavowed her father’s pro-Nazi past. “It’s the same politics of scapegoating that it always has been,” explains Professor Nonna Mayer, an expert on the French far right at the prestigious Paris Institute for Political Studies, or Sciences Po. “There’s no getting away from it.”

Crafty, charismatic and shamelessly provocative, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen is a former paratrooper and intelligence officer whose unit brutally tortured and killed “Arab terrorists” in Algeria. He created the National Front in 1972, bringing together self-proclaimed fascists, Vichy collaborators, well-known war criminals and more traditional right-wing Catholics. He publicly dismissed the Holocaust as “a mere detail in the history of the Second World War.” He publicly made puns about the Nazi gas ovens. He accused former president Jacques Chirac of being “in the pay of Jewish organizations,” and this February a French appeals court upheld his conviction for denying crimes against humanity when he said that the Nazi occupation of France “was not especially inhumane.” But as far back as his historic 2002 campaign against Chirac, he downplayed his signature anti-Semitism and directed his hatred primarily at Muslims, whom he accused of taking French jobs, threatening French culture and polluting the national identity. “Tomorrow, if you don’t watch out,” he warned, “they will take your home, eat your food and sleep with your wife, your daughter, or your son.”
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