He separated sisters and brothers in the home, refused to shake women's hands and forced his wife to wear a burqa. Should France grant him citizenship?
Minister Eric Besson said no. The Conseil d'Etat upheld the decision, saying "The way of life he chose, though based on his religious beliefs, is incompatible with the values of the Republic, in particular the principle of equality of the sexes...He does not meet the condition of assimilation defined in article 21-4 of the Civil Code."
For full article in Le Figaro Imposé la burqa à sa femme le prive de naturalization, click here.
While France debates the burqa, calls for the death penalty greet Qatari girls who wear shorts.
Young Qataris are infuriating their elders by "cross dressing"--that is, dressing in shorts and shirts like American girls. According to The Economist, "manly women" (as these girls are called) are being condemned as part of a "foreign trend" brought into the Gulf by the evils of Globalisation. When asked on a Qatari talk show, how to deal with these girls, some members of the studio audience called for the DEATH SENTENCE.
On a related topic in the eternal women's fashion debate, see remarkably superficial NYT Editorial The Tabliban Would Applaud on France's efforts to respond to the challenge of the burqa. The NYT blithely states "People must be free to make these decisions for themselves" while forgetting how much pressure -- and violence--is applied to young girls and women who have no choice whatsoever.
How to integrate foreigners? Sweden starts early, with compulsary preschool for all. From 12-18 months old, foreign children are strongly encouraged to join their Swedish-born brethren in snowsuits and collective Swedish games--while mothers are gently but firmly pushed into the work force.
See this fascininating article from The Economist for more details.
Meanwhile, young Qataris are infuriating their elders by "cross dressing"--that is, dressing in shorts and shirts like American girls. According to The Economist, "manly women" (as these girls are called) are being condemned as part of a "foreign trend" brought into the Gulf by the evils of Globalisation. When asked on a Qatari talk show, how to deal with these girls, some members of the studio audience called for the DEATH SENTENCE.
On a related topic in the eternal women's fashion debate, see remarkably superficial NYT Editorial The Tabliban Would Applaud on France's efforts to respond to the challenge of the burqa. The NYT blithely states "People must be free to make these decisions for themselves" while forgetting how much pressure -- and violence--is applied to young girls and women who have no choice whatsoever.
I personally would rather listen to Fadela Amara, who's been on the front lines in France's immigrant ghettos fighting for women's freedom for years.
About the burqa Fadela Amara says,: "Je suis pour l'interdiction de ce cercueil qui tue les libertés fondamentales" et qui est "l'expression visible et physique des fondamentalistes et des intégristes dans notre pays."...
Could France be right about regulating powerful American internet companies?
In a stunning show of muscle, Amazon removed all of MacMillan's books from its store.
A major US publisher, MacMillan wanted to set the price of its books at around 15 dollars, 50% more than Amazon's standard Kindle price of 9.99 dollars.
Amazon responded by pulling all of MacMillan's books from the world's largest electronic bookstore.
How will this play out? Will Apple's new IPAD reader change the game ?
Who has the right to set book prices? The publisher? The distributor? The market? The state? How will this affect authors? It's a whole new world...
Teachers in France miss twice as many days of work as workers in the private sector.
As if that weren't bad enough, a recent confidential report commissioned by former Education Ministry Xavier Darcos revealed that substitute teachers registered even higher levels of absenteeism than the people they were meant to replace. 17.4 days a year!!
As a result, 10,000 classes currently have no teacher at all.
For the full report, read the excellent article in Le Monde entitled "Two million sick days" by Maryline Baumard.
On a personal note, I remember watching an 8th grade class self-destruct over the course of a year during which the French --and home room--teacher was absent and not replaced for over a month. During that time, the kids had "perm" (left to their own devices) with no French whatsoever. At each "conseil de classe" the other teachers and the principal complained about how dissipated and disruptive the students were. But at no point did it occur to them that abandoning the kids for over a month had anything to do with this.
Time magazine recently published an article about the challenge of learning English in France. Students pay high fees to private schools for English lessons after failing to learn the language despite years of studying in public schools. (read Time article here)
But what's really interesting is the reaction of many French readers to any discussion of how to improve English learning.
Articles in Le Monde and CafeBabel about France's disastrous results in the international TOEFL provoked a hail of abusive comments.
So passionate was the discussion that a mediator was assigned to analyze the remarks for Le Monde. The result? About half the respondents protested against having to learn English at all.
The former president of the Association des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes (APLV) published a long and bitter letter denouncing, not France's poor results in English, but the media for publicizing them.
At Cafebabel the offense was even worse. A journalist who dared to poke fun at the French for their consistently poor results in every international comparison of English skills was pilloried. The curiously pro-French language Observatoire Européen du Plurilinguisme publicly denounced the journalist and called for him to be banned.
And yet, French parents want their children to learn English. They show this by investing massively in expensive and time-consuming private lessons and language study programs abroad.
How to improve English skills in France? A reasonable question, non?
The dead factory worker wore five layers of underclothing (like a Muslim suicide bomber) and had ties to Islamist groups.
Yet France's highest officials declared the AZF chemical plant explosion in Toulouse to be an "accident" only three days after the catastrophe caused 31 deaths, 2500 injuries and 2 billion euros of property damages. Before the investigation got underway. Ten days after 911.
For exploring the Islamist ties of a temporary worker of Tunisian origin killed in the explosion, Le Figaro and Valeurs Actuelleswere charged with "diffamation.
French intelligence services saw their investigatons stopped.
And while an "accident" was the official thesis from the start, no reconstitution of events or hypothetical chain of events was able to recreate the explosion.
Now, eight years later, a French court has ruled to aquit AZF's directors (a Total subsidiary) of any responsibility for the explosion.
Raison d'état is a familiar concept in France, and one which feeds the unhealthy French love of conspiracy theories.
But this time, the French state may have gone too far: to decree a lethal explosion an "accident", and then to hold no one responsible?
For readers interested in exploring this topic, I will be posting links to books and articles. Check this space for more. Here is the very complete wikipedia entry in French.
France has decided to switch to one vaccination instead of two for people over nine.
Respiratory infections are at record highs, and the seasonal flu season has not yet officially begun.
The spread of conspiracy theories, however, may now finally be on the decline.
* "la ministre de la Santé, en soulignant que «le personnel soignant non vacciné est, selon plusieurs études, la source principale des contaminations nosocomiales durant les épidémies de grippe».
Mireille Guiliano's best seller French Women Don't Get Fat hit a raw (and plump) American nerve. Lucky French women! What's their secret?
Some insist that speaking French correctly is so hard that it burns extra calories. Others believe in the magic of red wine. And, of course, French women smoke, but it would be irresponsible to mention that, so better not.
Guiliano herself published a French Women's Manifesto which claims that French women eat three meals a day (basically true), that they care about looks, both their own and their food's (true) and that they don't diet (absolutely false). She also maintains that French women "are individuals and don't follow mass movement". (The guys in Mad Men couldn't have put it better.) .
But what if you are not a French woman? What then?
With eatfests Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Years bearing down on us like a drunken 18 wheeler, evasive action is needed, now! Here's my modest contribution...
FIVE WEIGHTLOSS STRATEGIES BY VERITABLE EXPERTS
1. The first, of course, is to become a French woman, not from the north, (where sadly they're as fat as Americans) but from Paris, where nervous ladies with the racy look of greyhounds, rush about on cruelly elegant high heels -- from kids to husband to work to garage (to get the car fixed) to grocery store, to psychiatrist to herbalist to lover to garage (to pick up the car) to kids and husband and dishes and laundry and sleeping pills and -- merde!, time to get up again! (Diet may not be the sole explanation for their svelte looks.)
2 . Change just one thing! Peter Bregman, blogging on Harvard Business Review's site, reveals that all diets have one thing in common: reduction of calorie intake. His solution: go simple. Figure out which single action will have the most impact and do that, just that. In his case, he cut out sugar. And lost 18 pounds. (see To Change Effectively, Change just one Thing)
3. Get really sick. Flu, malaria, dysentery--options are many! For that pale, Kate Moss look, nothing beats disease.
4. Give your food to your spouse. Or, lacking that, your dog. As they say, one woman's loss is another man's gain!
5. Eat only vegetables for dinner. No-one actually likes vegetables, though even the president of the United States cannot admit this (except for broccoli)
Zucchini, cabbage, cauliflower, beets, green beans, carrots--I've cooked them all with love and my family still acts like it's doing me a favor to choke them down. Don't fight it! use it! From now on, dinner is Herbevore Delight.
He separated sisters and brothers in the home, refused to shake women's hands and forced his wife to wear a burqa. Should France grant him citizenship?
