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American Francophobia is not all it's cracked up to be. Actually it's not even a phobia. It is more like an expression of extreme distaste or disgust. Its character is evident in the invention of "Freedom Fries" or in the pouring of Bordeaux wine into sewers. It is theatrical and demonstrative. It tends toward ridicule. And usually it reacts to something very specific: it has a news peg. The latest peg was France's opposition to United States policies in Iraq. And repercussions from that confrontation are likely to overwhelm any partial reconciliations. They have already inspired a series of books...

When are we Americans going to wise up? How many times does the French government, led by Jacques Chirac (search), have to put all of us in danger before we get the picture? France is helping worldwide terrorism. Here's the latest. France has said no to Secretary of State Rice, who asked the Chirac government to designate Hezbollah (search) as a terrorist group. If France would do that, Hezbollah could not raise money in Europe, which it is now doing through various charitable fronts. There is no question Hezbollah is a terrorist group. It was responsible for killing more than...

<p>CNN liberal girly-man Bruce Morton just completed a segment on Inside Politics the point of which was to encourage Americans to stop boycotting French products.</p> <p>His pitch came in the course of a segment demonstrating - through poll results and conciliatory remarks by Condi Rice - that American attitudes toward France are thawing.</p>

The French have lost the initiative when it comes to selling and making their most famous product One of the most poignant moments in Sideways, Alexander Payne's Oscar-nominated film about a wine geek's mid-life crisis, takes places in a burger bar. Miles, the movie's balding, fortysomething anti-hero has fled his best friend's wedding after bumping into his ex-wife. Alone and miserable, he finds solace in a bottle of 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc, sipped surreptitiously from a plastic cup. The choice of bottle is significant. The 1961Cheval Blanc is a remarkable Saint Emilion, and for Miles it represents something very special....

Paris – In A gesture likely to bring an apoplectic flush to the face of any dedicated claret drinker, French wine growers have proposed a desperate plan to prop up their slumping industry against New World competition by handing thousands of barrels to industrial distillers. It is the first time that grand wines protected by the Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) label have been treated in such a way. And as is usually the case with French agriculture, the vignerons are counting on their Government and Brussels to foot much of the bill for mopping up a wine lake of eminently...

* Air France * Air Liquide * Airbus * Alcatel * Allegra (allergy medication) * Aqualung (including: Spirotechnique, Technisub, US Divers, and SeaQuest) * BF Goodrich (owned by Michelin) * Car & Driver Magazine * Chivas Regal (scotch) * Culligan (owned by Vivendi) * Dannon (yogurt and dairy foods) * DKNY * Glenlivet (scotch) * Jerry Springer (talk show) * Krups (coffee and cappuccino makers) * Maybelline * Motel 6 * Motown Records * MP3.com * Nivea * Parents Magazine * RCA (televisions and electronics; owned by Thomson Electronics) * Red Roof Inns (owned by Accor group in France) *...

French wine exports are in their sixth successive year of decline. Thousands of winemakers have staged protests in the streets of France to demand government help over falling exports and a slump in domestic sales. Demonstrators in Avignon, Bordeaux, Macon, Angers, Nantes and other towns rallied behind black-draped tractors. They blame over-production, shrinking exports and a government campaign against alcohol abuse for what union leaders call a "crisis" in winemaking. France's agriculture ministry said it would meet industry leaders next week. The unions want the government to provide money for farmers wishing to move from vines to other crops and...

PRESS RELEASE September 23, 2004 Burn Baby Burn KOLE joins FOX’s Bill O’Reilly in his France Boycott Beaumont, Texas – KOLE (News Radio FOX 1340/1380 AM) FOX Morning Blend host Dominick Brascia announced this morning on his radio show that he will burn the flag of France and will join Bill O’Reilly of FOX News in his effort to boycott France. Brascia, along with co-hosts Debbie Wylde and Jeff Roberts, got angry after learning that, again, France was standing in the way of America’s War on Terrorism in Iraq. After putting together a list of all the problems America has...

Faced with what some are calling its greatest crisis for 150 years, France's most prestigious winegrowing region has decided to cut back the amount of wine it sells. The Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB), which includes legendary names such as Chateau Latour, Chateau Margaux and Chateau Haut Brion and countless smaller producers, independent wine merchants, trade unions and cooperatives, said yesterday that its members had agreed to limit sales from this season's harvest to 50 hectolitres (5,000 litres) per hectare. Anything more would be stored until the CIVB decided that conditions had improved. It is an unprecedented decision which will reduce...

Bill O'Reilly: No brie for me By BILL O'REILLY, Creators Syndicate July 5, 2004 Enough with France. That country is not a friend to the USA, or to peace-seeking Iraqis and Afghans. French President Jacques Chirac continues to block efforts by the USA and Britain to bring stability to former dictatorships and make it more difficult for homicidal terrorists to operate. Take a look at Chirac's recent resume: — Last week he blocked a newly created NATO strike force from going to Afghanistan to provide extra security for elections. Chirac said: "(the strike force) should not be used for troop...

Alors! Spilling Wine To Chastise France They were Americans exercising their right of protest, and they poured out their anger at France. As the French fought early last year to block United Nations approval for an invasion of Iraq, some Americans responded by boycotting anything French. Occasionally, they made a public splash of it, emptying bottles of French wine into sewers and rivers, while fellow Americans hailed or assailed their actions. Anthony M. Tola, above, drew a media spotlight when he poured a bottle of merlot into a toilet at his New Brunswick, N.J., restaurant and said he had earlier...

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Britain extended its lead over theU.S. as the champagne export capital of the world as U.K.drinkers' consumption of the French wine rose 8.8 percent in 2003. Champagne drinkers bought 34 million bottles in the U.K.last year, as popularity among young people increased for a thirdstraight year. The U.K. market is now almost twice the size ofthe U.S., the second-largest market, according to industry groupthe Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne. ``The younger generation have made it their drink,'' BrunoPaillard, co-head of the Epernay, France-based group, said in aninterview at the Champagne Information Bureau's annual tastingevent at...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi Shiite clerics called for a boycott of French products in protest at France's move to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia from schools. "I suggest that a fatwa (religious edict) be issued by (Shiite religious scholars in the Iraqi holy city of) Najaf, (the Iranian Shiite religious center of) Qom and al-Azhar (the Sunni Muslims' highest religious authority) ordering a boycott of French products," firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said. "If we cannot reach such a decision, we should at least threaten to do it," he told worshippers during his weekly sermon in Kufa near Najaf....

Boycott French products, says cleric From correspondents in Baghdad December 26, 2003 A Shiite cleric called Friday for an Iraqi boycott of French products in protest at France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia from schools. "We condemn the French government's decision prohibiting the Islamic veil and we demand the liberty that France says it embodies," Sayyed Amer al-Husseini told some 10,000 worshippers in the Shiite-populated Baghdad Sadr City district. "We encourage a boycott of French products and call on Muslims in France to continue wearing the veil," he said in a sermon at the main weekly...

PARIS - France's wine industry wants drivers to know: It's OK to have a drink for the road. Or three. The $18 billion-a-year wine industry is fighting back against a government campaign to discourage drunken driving. It claims the government is scaring people away from ordering a glass when they go out and points to a 15 percent drop in wine sales at restaurants. "People are so afraid of the police these days that they're not drinking any wine at all," Pascal Bobillier-Monnot, director of CNAOC national wine producers' association, said Friday.

French wine exports to Japan drop PARIS (Kyodo) Wine exports from France to Japan in the 12 months through July dropped 10.6 percent from a year earlier, according to wine producers' data made available by Wednesday. The substantial fall in exports to Japan has partly caused a 2.7 percent fall in France's overall wine exports, which stood at 1.51 million kiloliters for the year. A wine industry official attributed the slowed exports to Japan to the liquor tax hike in May and weak economic activity. Exports to the United States decreased 8.8 percent, reflecting anti-French sentiment following the French government's...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As vintners Down Under might tell their French rivals -- vive la difference, mate. In a battle pitting their upstart Yellow Tail brand against vintage Bordeaux, Australian wine makers are elbowing past the French as dominant exporters to a friendly U.S. market. Analysts attribute that reversal of fortune to the U.S. consumer's growing view of Australian wines as unpretentious and affordable. They are, in short, very un-French. The trend has been helped by patriotic Americans showing appreciation for Australia for backing the invasion of Iraq, while shying away from products from nations like France, which opposed...

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - They might hate French diplomacy, but Americans can't help but splash out on France's fine wines. Despite threatening to boycott French products when Paris opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites), Americans overtook Germans as the biggest spenders on France's Bordeaux wines in the 2002-03 sales year. The CIVB, a Bordeaux wine council, reported on Thursday a 77 percent rise in the value of the region's produce sold to the U.S. market in 2002-03. The increase was mainly due to demand for the 2000 vintage, which is popular because of the sentimental value...

Sales of French wines have been suffering in the United States ever since March, when some American consumers threatened boycotts to show their displeasure over France's opposition the U.S. plan to invade Iraq. But with the passage of time and changes in the global political situation, have French wines been recovering in the market? Not according to the latest figures on wine imports and retail sales. The six months of retail sales data available since March from Information Resources Inc. shows that French wines dropped in each of six periods through mid-August compared with 2002, yet Americans bought more table...

Polish troops have found four French-made advanced missiles in Iraq. Although the missiles are not considered weapons of mass destruction, their discovery surprised many as the UN had barred Iraq from importing arms after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The four Roland-type French-made missiles were discovered earlier this week, reportedly in the Hilla region near a highway. Experts say the missiles, fired from a mobile launcher vehicle, are highly effective against low-flying aircraft. "These missiles have a range of up to 9 kilometres. They can hit any aircraft," said Major Zbigniew Spiewakowski, Deputy Commander of 1st Combat Group. The...

French suppress schadenfreude over U.S. Iraq woes By Mark John PARIS, Sept 5 (Reuters) - What is French for "I told you so?" With the United States swallowing its pride to seek help sorting out the postwar debacle in Iraq, France and fellow "Old Europe" opponents of the conflict can barely resist gloating. "So the 'Frenchies' were cowardly, ungrateful, naive, petty and self-seeking, were they?" asked veteran French commentator Regis Debray on Friday. "If you like. But at least they judged it right," he wrote in the daily Le Figaro, catching the mood of grim satisfaction among many in a...

Sun fails to shine on French tourism A long list of bad breaks — ranging from the Iraq war to a strike by performance artists and the worst forest fires in a quarter of a century — has conspired to make summer 2003 a season of gloom for the French tourist industry. Hugh Schofield reports. Figures just released for July show that visitor rates are down by an average of 20 percent on 2002, with the biggest shortfall made up by absent Americans — staying away because of the Franco-US rift on Iraq and the falling dollar. Hotels, restaurants and...

President George W Bush's personal chef has been humiliated by a team of French practical jokers who tempted him with a job offer to desert his employer and go to work for President Jacques Chirac.The stunt, which is threatening to spiral into a diplomatic incident, happened when Walter Scheib visited Paris in his capacity as president of the Chefs des Chefs d'Etat, a club for those who cook for the world's heads of state.On Wednesday evening he was due to attend a party at the Elysee Palace given by the French leader's wife, Bernadette. That afternoon a French television company...

This caught my eye as I was flipping the stations so I stayed with it. A short three minute report on CNN stating how American tourism in France is down 30%. According to the report, "Major french hotels are hurting for business and they rely on big spending Americans for business." In an interview with a french tourist official they admit france's yellow-bellied refusal to stand with America in the Iraq war has cost them and most Americans are "vacationing in Italy". This "crisis" will probably last for at least another year. At one point the reporter was walking down...

The French economy suffered a sharper-than-expected fall in growth during the second quarter, casting a shadow over hopes of a recovery in the eurozone. French GDP fell 0.3 per cent in the period, according to figures released on Wednesday by Insee, the official statistics institute, which lowered its previous figure for first quarter growth from 0.3 per cent to 0.2 per cent. Equity markets have risen strongly in recent weeks on hopes that an accelerating US pick-up will drag the 12-eurozone nations out of the mire. "It shows we should not get carried away by market optimism," said Ken Wattret...

U.S. boost to Moscow air show is snub to France By Anatoly Vereshchagin MOSCOW, Aug. 19 — The United States sent its top fighter planes to Russia on Tuesday for the first time, handing a huge boost to Moscow's annual air show at the expense of the Paris Air show that Washington largely boycotted.        Jubilant Russian officials said the presence of F-15s, F-16s and the B-52 bomber had turned the Moscow air show -- normally a modest affair compared with similar West European displays -- into the most prestigious air event this year.      ...

<p>Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- France's economy, Europe's third largest, contracted in the second quarter as the dollar's drop stifled exports and consumer spending fell, pushing the economy of the 12 nations sharing the euro to the brink of recession.</p> <p>Gross domestic product in France shrank 0.3 percent, state statistics office Insee said in Paris. The slump means the euro region's $8 trillion economy probably contracted for only the second time since the currency was introduced in 1999, an official at the European Union statistics office said.</p>

Europe pines for big-spending US tourists By Mark Rice-Oxley | Special to the Christian Science Monitor LONDON - Down at Westminster Pier, where the river cruisers come and go in the unusually hot August sunshine, a chatter of languages floats ashore on a merciful breeze. French, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Spanish. Tourism, it seems, is alive once more. But one tongue is barely heard. That instantly recognizable American accent, usually so audible in tourist spots around European capitals, is all but silent. It's not that the US contingent is unusually quiet. It's that it is barely present. "My son was just...

My daughter dragged me to Pike Place Market last weekend where we found some terrific wines at DeLaurenti's Italian food and wine shop. We sampled lovely Spanish wines and bought a mixed case. Our favorite was a dessert wine to literally die for. It is so good I'd become an instant alcholic if I brought a bottle home without a crowd to share it with: Casta Diva Cosecha Miel, "Honey Harvest" 2001, Bodegas Gutierrez de la Vega (Diva indeed!)About $20 100% Moscatel Romano (Muscat of Alexandnria) grown on Greco-Roman terraces overlooking the Mediterranean in the maritmie microclimate of Alicante's Marina...

<p>"Mickey [Mouse] hasn't got a cent," Libération, France's left-leaning daily, announced. "Mickey's little Parisian world isn't smiling," Belgium's Derniére Heure somberly reported.</p> <p>"The worldwide crisis in tourism, the European economic slowdown, the trauma [associated with] Sept. 11 -- for [Euro Disney's] management, those are the principal reasons for its setbacks," reported La Libre Belgique, echoing other business assessments. But "the real problem," an analyst for a leading French labor union explained, "is [Euro Disney's] financial base, the structure of the company itself. [It] is in too much debt." (AFP/La Croix) He added that there has been "a weakening of the product." The analyst said, "André Lacroix talks to us nonstop about marketing, but because there's no budget, there aren't enough new attractions, and people don't come back."</p>

PARIS (AP) - From luxury hotels on the French Riviera to Viennese cafes and the double-decker buses of London, American tourists have deserted Europe en masse. The reasons for the drop in U.S. visitors include a weak dollar, post-Sept. 11, 2001 fears of terrorism and the diplomatic dispute with some European countries over the Iraq war. In France, the absence of Americans is headline news. Le Monde newspaper summed up it up in a front-page cartoon that shows two French vacationers reclining under a palm tree. "Let's not exaggerate! I spotted an American," one of them tells his friend. "Lance...

The Associated Press PARIS Aug. 7 — From luxury hotels on the French Riviera to Viennese cafes and the double-decker buses of London, American tourists have deserted Europe en masse.The reasons for the drop in U.S. visitors include a weak dollar, post-Sept. 11, 2001 fears of terrorism and the diplomatic dispute with some European countries over the Iraq war. In France, the absence of Americans is headline news. Le Monde newspaper summed up it up in a front-page cartoon that shows two French vacationers reclining under a palm tree."Let's not exaggerate! I spotted an American," one of them tells...

American Tourists are announcing their displeasure to the French attitude towards the US in a different way this summer, with their pocketbooks. The Telegraph, a British news agency, is reporting that American visits this tourist season are down 50 percent from last year, while British visits are down 10 percent. This has to just chap the hide of the angriest of the anti-war crowd. As the US contributes billions to the French economy each year. And those aren't spent just by the strongest supporters of the Iraqi War. Perhaps this is also why in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll...

Millions of foreign tourists are shunning France this summer, costing the country billions of pounds and threatening its position as the world's favourite destination. Travel agents say there is widespread evidence that the tourist industry is suffering as a result of President Jacques Chirac's vehement stand against the war in Iraq. The strong euro has added to the crisis. According to the president of France's travel agents' union, Cesar Balderacchi, bookings from the United States in the past six months were 50 per cent down on last year, with no sign of improvement as the tourist season reaches its peak....

<p>The nation of haute cuisine, insolent waiters and all-around haughtiness wants the sneaker-wearing, loud-mouthed, empire-building Americans back. Badly. Yes, the French apparently miss us.</p> <p>More to the point, the French miss U.S. dollars. Americans accounted for just 5% of visitors to France last year but were responsible for 15% of all tourist spending. The French tourism ministry puts the decline in American visitors at 30% in the first five months of this year, and blames a weak dollar and edginess about trans-Atlantic travel after 9/11.</p>

The telephone background music at the federation of French tourist offices yesterday was "Georgia on My Mind". Who said that France was anti-American? A lot of people did - over and over again - before and during and after the Iraq war. As a result, it appears that many fewer Americans, from Georgia or any other state, have France on their mind this summer. The official figure - American visits down 30 per cent - does not tell the whole story. The union of French travel agents suggests that American tourism has fallen by 80 per cent this year. An...

TOURISM ON THE RACK France is still the world’s number one destination for holiday makers but the figures are 20% down so far this year. 75.6 million tourists visited the hexagon last year, 50% ahead of the United States, a vastly bigger country and population. Measured in nights spent in each country, France and the US are neck and neck but they are both 100% ahead of the UK in third place. With agriculture, the tourist industry has been a big contributor to France’s consistently favourable international trade balance. . For a heavily indebted business this downturn may well be...

Le Tricolore flies again over the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino. The national colors of France were restored Monday after casino executives had removed the unpopular flags in March. "The decision to temporarily take the French flags off the outside of the property reflected the political sentiments of many of our guests at the time given what was happening in the Middle East," Park Place Entertainment spokesman Robert Stewart said Tuesday. France was decidedly against going to war in Iraq, and its stance led some Americans to boycott French products in the United States. Stewart said not all of the 21...

<p>BERKELEY - Sales of French wine are slumping by some measures, although it is hard to say how much of that is due to the calls for boycott that sprang up after France opposed the war in Iraq and how much is due to the weak economy.</p>

PARIS (Reuters) - Paris is launching a champagne and flowers charm offensive to woo U.S. tourists after France's opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq triggered a large drop in the number of transatlantic visitors. Around 100 hotels, restaurants, shops and other businesses will be laying on the bubbly, blooms and other treats for American visitors in a promotional campaign timed to coincide with the U.S. Independence Day celebrations on July 4. "This campaign is aimed at Americans who would like to visit France, but are worried about what kind of welcome they might receive," the tourist office said in...

<p>July 2, 2003 -- HOWARD Leach, President Bush's ambassador to France, says the friction between America and its erstwhile ally are "in the past and now part of history."</p> <p>When an ambassador is so out of synch with the people he's supposed to represent, maybe it's time for him to come home. Leach needs to familiarize himself with the depth and intensity of anti-French feeling in the United States.</p>

Dennis Prager just returned from a cruise, and one of his stops was Paris. He was at the eye-full tower and noticed that he saw very few Americans. He asked an official if he was right in his assessment that Americans are staying away. The official told Dennis that a year ago in June, there were 140% more Americans here viewing the eye-full tower. For you RATS who are lurking and need help, that means for every 100 Americans there now, a year ago there would have been 240 Americans. Too bad. Take that, you stinking ungrateful weasel frogs. Here's...

Despite attempts by the U.S. and France to kiss and make up after stark disagreement about the war in Iraq, French wine sales in the U.S. continue to plummet. The rate of decline of French wine sales in America, in fact, has actually accelerated. A study by Information Resources Inc. published in Wine Spectator showed that between April 21 and May 18, sales of French wine in the United States fell by 26.2 percent in terms of case volume, and by 27 percent in dollar value. In the previous four weeks, case volume sank by just 22.6 percent, and...

<p>NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - This week in Bordeaux, 50,000 people will attend Vinexpo, the wine industry's biggest annual trade show. Topic A for discussion: sagging sales of French wine in the United States.</p> <p>During the war in Iraq, a political spat between the U.S. and France prompted consumer boycotts in each country of the other's products. In Provence, McDonald's outlets were vandalized, and many Americans stopped buying French wines.</p>

<p>It seemed like a joke at first: A handful of restaurants changing the names of their French fries to "freedom fries," a few bartenders pouring French wine down street drains and a chain of French-owned hotels lowering their tricolor flags. The craziest idea, appropriately enough, came from Congress, when Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a Florida Republican, proposed exhuming the patriot graves of American soldiers buried in France and bringing them back to the U.S.</p>

PARIS (Reuters) - France's defense minister took a double swipe at the United States on Saturday, accusing her counterpart Donald Rumsfeld of American supremacism and U.S. industry of waging "economic war" on Europe. Michele Alliot-Marie's remarks, in a newspaper interview, were the bluntest criticism of Washington by a French official since presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush skirted around their differences on Iraq (news - web sites) at a summit two weeks ago. "The American Defense Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld) believes the United States is the only military, economic and financial power in the world. We do not share this...

PARIS June 14 — France's defense minister criticized her American counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview published Saturday as someone who considers the United States the world's only military, economic and financial power.Michele Alliot-Marie also accused American industry of waging "economic war" by trying to "take over the capital" of European defense-related industries. Europeans must regroup to resist, she said, according to the interview in the daily newspaper Le Monde.Alliot-Marie's blunt remarks recalled the bad blood between Paris and Washington over France's leading role in opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq.Rumsfeld's January dig at France and Germany as being part...

France Chides Washington Over 'My Way' World View 13 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) - France's defense minister took a double swipe at the United States on Saturday, accusing her counterpart Donald Rumsfeld of American supremacism and U.S. industry of waging "economic war" on Europe. Michele Alliot-Marie's remarks, in a newspaper interview, were the bluntest criticism of Washington by a French official since presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush skirted around their differences on Iraq (news - web sites) at a summit two weeks ago. "The American Defense Secretary...

PARIS, June 14 (Reuters) - France's Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Saturday urged European firms to stand together to resist what she called an American "economic war". Her remarks coincided with the opening of the Paris Air Show where European and American planemakers traditionally battle for airline orders, but which has been tainted this year by tensions over France's opposition to the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq. "American industrialists are pursuing a logic of economic war," she was quoted as saying in an interview with Le Monde, which the paper said had been read and cleared by her office before...

CANAL DU MIDI, France--It's high summer in France: bikinis blossom on the beach at St. Tropez and lovers stroll in lingering twilight beneath the Eiffel Tower. The only things missing from these postcard-perfect scenes are Americans. Still fuming over French President Jacques Chirac's active opposition to the war in Iraq, Americans are taking out their ire by staying home or vacationing elsewhere. "I doubt I'll ever set foot in France again," a hawkish friend from Kansas e-mailed me. Other friends who are veterans echoed the same sentiment. "France?" You couldn't pay me to go there!" snorted one. Well, somebody did...