Re: ...including all the other people grouped under the 'Hispanic' label, especially people of Cuban descent, the problem becomes much smaller. I expect that there are plans for this situation already in place.
LOL... How can you tell an ETA terrorist from your regular wetback?
Re: So what sort of relation do you see France and the other Meditarrain states building with the Arabs/ Muslims ?
It seems that Denmark and Holland want to go another direction....
That "other direction" has already been tried 70 years ago --in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franquist Spain, Vichy France, etc.
As I said several years ago, I expect Europe to meet the same fate as Byzantium in the XVth century... Just like the lords of Latin Europe (ie the French, Venetians, Normands, Germans) attempted to rule over Byzantium from 1204 yet failed eventually, American Judeo-Protestant crusaders are trying to to turn Europe into an American replica....
Fifty years ago, Lt. Jacques Chirac was sent to Algeria to fight what the French authorities dismissed as a mere mayhem... The war ended in 1962 with the victorious independence of Algeria and a death toll of 300,000+ among Muslim Algerians alone. In 1975, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was the first French President to visit Algeria (he met Boumedienne).
Last year, when President Jacques Chirac visited Algeria and met with President Bouteflika, thousands of Algerian youths greeted him with "Des Visas! des visas! des visas!" It must have been a moving moment for Jacques Chirac --women greeted him with their traditional youyous and showered him with rice.... Chirac, that is, the President of the country that so savagely and mercilessly fought their fathers and grandfathers, was welcomed and hailed as a hero by the Algerian youth! But Chirac has not only befriended Muslim Arabs --just ask another (Christian Maronite) hero, Lebanese General Michel Aoun, where he spent his exile since his expulsion from Lebanon 15 years ago...
So, I believe France has shown the path, the right, wise path for Europe to follow. I'd add that Chirac has committed himself publicly to support Turkey's EU bid. He also appointed Dominique de Villepin as Prime Minister only yesterday --a sign of bad omen, to be sure. My guess was that current Defense Minister Michèlle Aliot-Marie would be picked. I ruled out Villepin because he entered History as the symbol of France's flamboyant opposition to the US crusade in Iraq... I expected that Chirac would seek a rapprochement with the US, and Mrs Aliot-Marie was the first French official to visit Washington in February 2005 and meet Condoleeza Rice. So I take it as a worrisome portent that Villepin was appointed PM because it somehow substantiates my prediction that another assault against IRAN is just around the corner --a conflict that will prove even more momentous and far-reaching than Iraq. By appointing Villepin, the man who so vividly addressed the UNSC in 2003(*), Chirac drops the hint that, once again, France must be counted out.
Gus
(*) Dominique de Villepin,
French foreign minister, emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush's pursuit of war in Iraq. He earned rare applause at a UN Security Council meeting in February, when he urged council members to give weapons inspectors and diplomacy more time. “No one can say today that the path of war would be shorter than the path of inspections. No one can claim either that it might lead to a safer, more just, and more stable world,” he said. He infuriated many in the Bush administration, who considered his protestations inflexible and arrogant.
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