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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (95232)	4/20/2003 8:27:29 PM
From: epsteinbd	Respond to of 281500

"France as an economic entity is doomed..." Some overstatements in those papers. The French economic problems are explained rather well, but there is nothing about the "bas de laine" the "in the mattress gold bullion" or how rich France really is. Not the flashy stuff, the real, the buried one. Nor a word on the French talent. It exists. All the good guys didn't expatriate. See why the English teachers are so lousy? The Last Guards, the Ultimate Frontier! But wait, and den Beste missed it: With a few millions still young third and forth generations Arabs, all of whom still speak mother tongue, France has the best spearhead army to go into all the Arab world. To do business. Ten, twenty years from now, it'll be a great asset. Exchanges will have increased ten fold, and who will grab that manna? Those that speak English but translated against the Arab despots, or those that speak excellent Arabic and whose country has cajoled so many (all) the regimes? The part on the Arab community guys arming themselves is over the edge. The French police doesn't mind some cars burning (every night in Strasbourg, "it's insured, right"!) But when weapons talk, they get involved. Massively. And the French Arab street doesn't riot as long as no Arab gets killed. They say: "do anything you wish but no killing!" (They even understand the concept of torture when "desserved": slaps etc), they just can't pardon a killing. Makes sense. In their world, stealing is not a sin and prison are natural places for thieves. When caught. Finally, the French did manage somehow to deal with the Algerian GIA since 1996, and considering the events in Algeria and the number of French Algerian mad guys running free in France, I must say that it's quite a success.