Free Republic

Vimy's new enemy: no uniform, no clothes, no respect Exhibitionism Veterans minister deterring public sex at memorial Rob Linke TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL Published Wednesday January 30th, 2008 Appeared on page A1 OTTAWA - More than 90 years after Canadian soldiers seized Vimy Ridge, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson is still part of a battle - this one to protect Canada's iconic memorial from kinky French couples. Vimy's new enemy are exhibitionists who pose nude or have sex at the First World War memorial, then post pictures of their activities online. Some images have the names of thousands of Canadian war dead, carved...

CHICAGO, (AP) -- French officials are refusing to extradite an American suspected of killing a dermatologist last year because he recently became a French citizen, prosecutors said. Hans Peterson, 29, turned himself in to French authorities Aug. 6 on the Caribbean island of St. Martin after an arrest warrant was issued for him in Chicago. He is accused of fatally stabbing Dr. David Cornbleet in the dermatologist's downtown Chicago office in October. Peterson, a U.S. citizen whose mother is French, obtained French citizenship in May while living on St. Martin, the Chicago Tribune reported. Peterson is being held in French-controlled...

Turf-conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages threatening to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. These are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths. France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police...

It's an epidemic of caricature and vilification, and the slurs are, for the most part, neither subtle nor gentle. As one French critic noted recently, "Hollywood hasn't engaged in this kind of wholesale nationality-bashing since Pearl Harbor." What's going on? It's a debatable issue, but it doesn't take a sociology degree to see that it mostly stems from two factors: American anger over the lack of French support for the Iraq invasion, and the absence of politically correct movie villains since the end of the Cold War. Since 2003, a wave of anti-French sentiment in America has resulted in boycotts...

Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning hard to be the next president of France on the jogging trails of Central Park and in the corridors of the White House. On a four-day trip to the United States, the 51-year-old minister of the interior, France’s leading presidential hopeful on the right, pinned the Legion of Honor on the police commissioner of New York, honored firefighters in Midtown Manhattan for their losses on 9/11 and signed hundreds of copies of his new best-selling book on France’s future. He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free...

PARIS -- "We are all Americans," France's Le Monde newspaper proclaimed on Sept. 12, 2001, speaking for millions worldwide in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States. Five years later, the respected daily carried a very different message Monday: Its lead editorial was titled "Bush's Mistakes." The paper's assessment five years ago reflected a collective shock and sympathy felt in France and many nations that has given way to a much more complex view of the United States since then, particularly after the war in Iraq. In its issue Monday, Le Monde called the war in Afghanistan...

House Votes To Ban Horse Slaughter WASHINGTON -- The House voted on Thursday to ban the slaughter of horses for meat, a practice that lawmakers thought they already had ended. Instead of banning it outright, Congress last year yanked the salaries and expenses of federal inspectors. But the Bush administration simply started charging plants for inspections, and the slaughter has continued. The House vote was 263-146 to outlaw the killing of horses for human consumption. Opponents of the practice showed photographs of horses with bloodied and lacerated faces, the result of being crammed into trailers that would carry the animals...

UN force put in doubt as French reveal militia fear From Charles Bremner in Paris PLANS for a 15,000-strong United Nations force in Lebanon were cast into doubt yesterday when France demanded guarantees that Hezbollah forces would first be disarmed and Germany said it would not send combat troops. President Chirac’s office announced that France would add immediately 200 troops to its contingent of 200 serving with the existing UN force in south Lebanon (Unifil), which France commands. The statement, after a telephone conversation between M Chirac and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, dismayed UN officials, who had hoped...

PARIS - Brigitte Bardot, angered over what she called France's insensitivity to the plight of minks, has threatened to move to Sweden. The French film star, who runs a foundation for animal rights, wrote a letter Wednesday to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson calling his nation one of only a few countries "that takes into consideration animal well-being." Bardot also contacted the French Finance Ministry to criticize France for attacking Sweden's proposal for new European Commission rules on conditions for raising minks in Sweden. "The intervention of my government makes me ashamed, ashamed to be French," she wrote. While Bardot...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Lance Armstrong renewed his verbal attack on the French, bashing their World Cup team during an American awards show and using a derogatory word to describe the players. "All their players (France) tested positive ... for being a** holes," the seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Daily News on Friday. The American cycling hero Armstrong made his comments in his opening monologue as the host of ESPY Awards, an annual televised event produced by ESPN. The show was taped on Wednesday at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre and is scheduled...

Google has a tool that allows you to track the popularity of certain searches on that site. There have been plenty of stories on who pops up when you type in 'miserable failure,' and plenty of derision heaped on Google for allowing its site to be 'bombed' in this way. I occasionally take a peek to see if conservatives have managed to overcome the bombers yet by linking the term properly more often. However, no one seems to have pointed out that, with this tool, you can track who most often searches for that term, which I think tells you...

PARIS — About 70 percent of French people are dissatisfied with President Jacques Chirac's performance, an all-time low popularity rating, according to poll published Sunday. Only 27 percent of French people are satisfied with Chirac, compared to 70 percent who say they disapprove, said the poll by the Ifop agency published in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Chirac's popularity figures tied his record low — also the record for any president in the Fifth Republic that began in 1958, the paper said. Chirac's second term ends next year, and he is unlikely to seek re-election. The poll figures were even...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the Austin, Texas, cyclist. More.....

Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann- Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop...

PARIS (AFP) - The French navy made a red-faced admission that it had lost a multi-million dollar sonar navigation device after its cable ripped in stormy waters. Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed a report in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, and said an investigation had been launched into how the three-million-euro (3.7-million-dollars) device was mislaid. "An inquiry is underway to determine whether a technical or a human error is at the origin of this problem," she told reporters. Le Canard Enchaine reported that the captain of the De Grasse frigate, decided against his lieutenants' advice to try out the...

Dear Viewer, Thank you for your correspondence regarding the "South Park" episodes entitled "Cartoon Wars." We appreciate your concerns about censorship and the destructive influence of outside groups on the media, entertainment industry and particularly Comedy Central. To reiterate, as satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right. Our goal is to make people laugh and perhaps, if we're lucky, even make them think in the process. Comedy Central's belief in the First Amendment has not wavered, despite...

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac on Monday scrapped a controversial part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis. Unions celebrated what they called "a great victory," and also were deciding whether to keep up the protests. The top two student union UNEF and FIDL said they would press on with demonstrations Tuesday across France. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who devised the law, had faced down protesters for weeks, insisting that its most...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Bowing to pressure from students and unions, French President Jacques Chirac on Monday unveiled plans to scrap a controversial youth-labor contract that spawned weeks of strikes and led to a complete political stalemate. The first-job contract, also known as CPE, will be replaced by an initiative focused on youths from troubled backgrounds. "The president of the republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the law on equal opportunities with measures in favor of the professional insertion of young people in difficulty," a statement from Chirac's office said. The move comes as a terrible blow to Prime...

World soccer's governing body has raised concerns with the Israeli government after the IDF targeted the main soccer stadium in the Gaza Strip with artillery fire. The shells, which reportedly left a large crater in the center of the field, were fired early last Friday morning in response to Kassam rocket attacks. Those attacks included one rocket that landed on a soccer field at Kibbutz Karmiya, south of Ashkelon, the day before. The IDF has acknowledged that the stadium was specifically targeted to "send a strong message to the Palestinian people against terrorism." "Knowing the stadium was unpopulated, artillery fire...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi joked about declaring war on France on Friday and pretended to massage President Jacques Chirac, making light of a clash between their two countries over energy mergers. Leaving for the second day of European Union summit, Berlusconi told reporters: "There is no news, unless you journalists want us to declare war on France." Inside the conference room, the Italian leader walked up to the seated Chirac and put his hands on the French president's shoulders in what looked like a neck-rub, prompting a startled laugh. Tension between France and Italy has risen...