Poor France, Even AP Is Noticing The Decline

[Annie]

About 60 years later:



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_re_eu/the_french_malaise;_ylt=Any9HuAjIE3hGTGuN_gQ1FoUewgF

France wrestles with its own decline

By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press WriterSat Apr 14, 1:26 PM ET

Wars and weather have left few scars on Paris' Arc de Triomphe. Commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate his victories, the 15-story tower of bone-white stone stands as an eternal monument to French glory, a time when Europe trembled before this nation's might.

The national mood now, as France enters the final week before Sunday's presidential election, is far less exultant. To Roland Perrossier, whose great-great grandfather fought for Napoleon, the arch has become a symbol of decline.

"It's a feeling of lost glory," said Perrossier, sheltering under the arch from a spring squall. "The French have lost the aura they once had, and France — barring a few small exceptions — no longer occupies the place it used to internationally."

Philippe Souleau, a history teacher shepherding a party of schoolchildren, was gloomier still: "France no longer has military strength worth speaking of. It is no longer economically competitive, and all this means is that it has become a second-tier nation internationally and diplomatically. Its voice is no longer heard by all."

It seems a strange verdict on a nation that has just demonstrated the world's fastest train on rails (357.2 mph) and has co-produced the world's biggest airliner (up to 853 passengers). France has a nuclear arsenal and a veto on the U.N. Security Council. Its military still sees action in the African corners of its former empire, and plays a critical role in the war on terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

From baguettes to Airbuses, French taste and ingenuity are global commodities. And viewed from the flat top of the Arc de Triomphe, the tree-lined, dead-straight boulevards and elegant buildings of Paris are still an inspiring vista.

Yet for the French, no word seems too dark to describe their funk.

This malaise has translated into a volatile and unsettled election campaign, with surprises and suspense, and led by candidates promising change but none of the shock therapy that may be necessary to revive French fortunes.

Incumbent Jacques Chirac's decision, at 74, not to seek re-election ensures that the two-round vote April 22 and May 6 will usher in a new era, no matter who wins. That prospect has energized the electorate: Voter registration is up by percentages not seen in at least three decades.

After 12 years of Chirac, France almost certainly will get its first leader born after World War II. It might, in another first, be a woman: the Socialists' motherly, ever-smiling Segolene Royal. Or it may be the right's Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant. Or farmer's son Francois Bayrou, who bills himself as the centrist between the two main candidates.

With the vote splitting three or more ways in polls, and many voters making their mind up late, no one can confidently predict the winner.

But while the face will be new, the problems he or she inherits are not, and have defied solutions before:

_The large national debt, proportionately almost the same as the United States', which will limit the new president's room to spend France back into economic and mental health.

_An economy that has stagnated at around 1.5 percent annual average growth since Chirac's 2002 re-election while Germany's is recovering and China's and Britain's have leapfrogged ahead.

_Unemployment that remains stubbornly above 8 percent and topping 20 percent among the under-25s. That age group led three weeks of riots in 2005 in depressed housing projects.

The riots confronted the French with a reality they had long chosen to overlook: of a vast, angry underclass consisting largely of Africans and Arabs distanced from ancestral family values but shut out of the French cultural and economic mainstream.

Yet for all those longing for change, many others fear it. After the riots, the government tried to start solving the problem by making it slightly easier for businesses to hire young people. The effort collapsed in a fresh wave of violent protest because it was seen as an attack on job protections secured by France's powerful unions.

Nor is much comfort taken from looking overseas. Even though French multinationals are thriving, 64 percent of the French — the highest percentage in the European Union — see globalization as a threat to businesses and jobs, according to a survey last year by Eurobarometer. They worry about losing ground to China and other emerging powers that are active notably in Africa — a region the French have long seen as their own back yard.

Chirac sparked a brief uptick in French confidence by going toe-to-toe with President Bush against the war in Iraq. "It was a moment when France looked at itself in the mirror and found itself beautiful," says Emmanuel Riviere of the TNS-Sofres polling agency.

But the war went ahead, anyway, and some believe that the strain in relations with Washington was too great. Within the European Union, the French also sidelined themselves by voting against closer integration in 2005. In TNS-Sofres' monthly poll of 1,000 respondents, generally two-thirds say that France's role in the world is weakening.

France is hardly alone in struggling to redefine itself in the globalized, post-Cold War world. Britain, too, has had to digest the end of an empire. But French nostalgia for bygone glory and growth seems to hamstring its ability to face the future with confidence.

"In France, there is a particular strain of melancholy," political philosopher Chantal Delsol said in an interview. "The British tell themselves, 'We are no longer a great power, so we will live as a middling one.' But the French don't say that. They say, 'We are intrinsically a great power, so why isn't it working in reality?' For a while we try to shut our eyes, but that doesn't work for long. When reality truly dawns, then the first phase is extreme sadness, and that is the phase we are in now."

That means voters are in a rebellious mood. That's nothing new — Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the architect of modern France after World War II, once quipped, "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?" But the desire to protest through the ballot box is strong, and could create shocks come election day.

As they did in the last presidential elections in 2002 and the referendum on Europe in 2005, millions will likely use their vote, especially in the first round, to shout a loud "Non!" to the elite.

...

 

[UnAmericanYOU]

Just about every article I'm been reading about France uses that word - malaise - to describe the economic stagnation of that country.

This election is critical to what direction that country will take. France will either revive and recover from Chirac and Mitterand's rule and to do so, Sarkozy is the best bet. Of of the other three leading candidates, only one, Royal the socialist could actually win, it'd take a small miracle for Bayou, and there's no chance for LePen.

The other scenerio (a Royal or a Bayou win) will cause France to continue its freefall into Sharia law:

Proud, cocky France has given up yet again, and on two fronts at once: an all-Arabic version of the cable news network that is mostly government-funded, France 24, launched this week, and the ink is barely dry on an agreement France signed with Abu Dhabi to open a branch of the Louvre in that desert emirate.

These developments are not unrelated. Which one underscores more the deep malaise affecting the French nation is debatable, but clearly France is in no mood to put up a fight for things taken rather more seriously in centuries past, such as preserving a sense of national identity.

http://www.nysun.com/article/52226

Thats's confusing tolerance with acceptance yet AGAIN.

You know what they say about French elections, that they're only decided in that last week before. I have seen that poll, too, that 42 percent of French voters are still undecided - probably some of them are really for LePen. There's another late poll that has Royal and Sarkozy neck and neck:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1617755120070417

So one of them needs to get a majority, or they'll be a round two. I don't see that happening, they'll be a run-off between those two next month. France better do something, German armies marched in the streets of Paris in 1870 then in 1940, time's due.

 

[Annie]

Just about every article I'm been reading about France uses that word - malaise - to describe the economic stagnation of that country.

This election is critical to what direction that country will take. France will either revive and recover from Chirac and Mitterand's rule and to do so, Sarkozy is the best bet. Of of the other three leading candidates, only one, Royal the socialist could actually win, it'd take a small miracle for Bayou, and there's no chance for LePen.

The other scenerio (a Royal or a Bayou win) will cause France to continue its freefall into Sharia law:


http://www.nysun.com/article/52226

Thats's confusing tolerance with acceptance yet AGAIN.

You know what they say about French elections, that they're only decided in that last week before. I have seen that poll, too, that 42 percent of French voters are still undecided - probably some of them are really for LePen. There's another late poll that has Royal and Sarkozy neck and neck:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1617755120070417

So one of them needs to get a majority, or they'll be a round two. I don't see that happening, they'll be a run-off between those two next month. France better do something, German armies marched in the streets of Paris in 1870 then in 1940, time's due.

France sucks. It's the opinion of nearly any true democracy. Only closed societies go for it.