Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Stocks Crossing The 13 Week Moving Average <$10.01 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Strauss who wrote (10884)	4/22/2002 3:52:49 PM
From: Bucky Katt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13094

Jim, I think the French were a little shocked that a liberal got knocked out of the box by a far righter... And then they riot in the streets anyway...Just 'cause the unemployed kiddies didn't like the results.. Europe is in deep sht...What is the average unemployment, 9+% or something? I went long the QQQ here at 33.50 The Big Boyz shook things up pretty well today, gotta be a bounce in here somewhere. _____________________________________________________ Tuesday April 23, 1:48 AM France urged to unite against Le Pen after election shock France closed ranks against far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen following his shock triumph in the first round of the presidential election that sent shudders of alarm around the world. The Socialist party of defeated candidate Prime Minister Lionel Jospin led calls for voters to ensure that Le Pen is vanquished in the second round decider against incumbent President Jacques Chirac on May 5. "We know that Jacques Chirac is our adversary -- but we also know that Jean-Marie Le Pen is a danger for the republic," said party secretary Francois Hollande. Following Jospin's announcement he would retire from politics after Sunday's "thunderbolt" result, his left-wing coalition allies the Greens and the Communists also called for a vote for Chirac in order to keep out Le Pen. The 73-year-old leader of the National Front (FN) stunned France and its European allies when he won 17.2 percent of the presidential vote, pushing Jospin into third place and earning himself a position in the play-off. With an outraged political establishment determined to reconsign him to the sidelines, Le Pen has no chance of winning on May 5 -- opinion polls give him only around 22 percent -- but his triumph has been a troubling sign of the strength of anti-immigrant and anti-European feeling in France. Thousand of school students took to the streets of cities across the country, chanting slogans comparing Le Pen to Adolf Hitler and calling the FN a fascist organisation. "Mussolini: 1922. Hitler: 1933. Le Pen: never," protesters shouted in the eastern city of Strasbourg. The French press described the first-round result as a political "earthquake," and said France was veiled in a cloud of shame. "It wasn't a first round, it was a cataclysm," the left-wing Liberation wrote in an editorial. "Today's hangover is horrible ... France is being pointed at, with a jabbing finger, as a source of shame among democracies." Abroad, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Le Pen's showing was "alarming", while China's state media said it was a "humiliation" for France. In Britain -- where the tabloid Sun newspaper called Sunday's results "France's day of shame" -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman told reporters: "We trust the French people to reject extremism of any kind." In Israel Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, remembering that Le Pen once famously called the Holocaust "a detail of history", exhorted France's Jews to pack up and leave. From his headquarters in the Paris suburb of Saint Cloud, Le Pen insisted he was in with a fighting chance for the run-off, and launched an appeal for all opponents of European federation to join his campaign against Chirac, who is seeking a second term in office. He called on "patriots, sovereignists and true republicans to rally to my candidacy to oppose Brussels' technocratic Europe and to create a real push by the people for the defence of national independence and the opposition of globalisation." At a press conference he said that his first act on becoming president would be to take France out of the 15-nation EU. Reeling from the shock of Jospin's defeat, France's Socialist party (PS) cast about for the means to remobilise its forces in the face of a triumphant right. Following Jospin's announcement that he is to leave politics once the second round is over, Hollande, 47, said he would lead the party into the crucial legislative elections that follow in June. Jospin's chances in the presidential vote were undermined by four rival candidacies within his broad left coalition -- as well as three Trotskyists who took 11 percent of the vote -- and hopes of a left-wing fightback were likely to be hampered by bitter mutual recriminations. Though Chirac, 69, is assured of victory in the second round, as the left rallies behind him to keep out Le Pen, questions were already being raised about the credibility of his next five-year term. "He will owe (his re-election) not to his record in office, nor to his programme nor to an electoral momentum that he built up in the first round. He will be there by default, which will thereafter place him in the most fragile of positions," said Le Monde daily. ___________ Somehow, the French still seem to think their sht smells like spring flowers..