http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jun/06022003/utah/62299.asp


MONDAY June 02, 2003

Is French Toast? Utah Teachers Worry as Governments Squabble

PHOTO
Jimena Guzman, left, and Roxana Mendoza are among the students of Janet Landerman, right, whose French class at Cottonwood High School learns about French culture by playing "boule" and eating crepes. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

By Karyn Hsiao
The Salt Lake Tribune

In the U.S. backlash against all things French -- or at least all things with "French" in their names, like the fries, bread, braid and kiss -- how will French itself fare?
That question has French teachers everywhere en garde.
"Anybody who teaches French is going to be a bit of a Francophile, and we don't want to see our programs suffer," says Janet Landerman, an English and French teacher at Cottonwood High School in Salt Lake County. "Every time there's been an anti-France cartoon or something about 'freedom' fries, we've translated it into French and talked about it. That way the students can separate politics from language."
Like other Utah schools feeling the budget pinch, Cottonwood is evaluating whether it can hang on to all five of its foreign-language programs: Spanish, French, German, Latin and American Sign Language. The school's Latin and French instructors already teach other subjects, and third-year French was not offered this year. But Landerman says advanced French will make a comeback next year, and enrollment so far is stable.
Not so for all programs proliferating the mother tongue of Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo and Celine Dion.
In Utah junior high and high schools, the number of French students fell to 13,426 this year, according to the state Office of Education. That is down from 14,595 in 2000.
Meanwhile, Salt Lake City's French Alliance language school is at its lowest enrollment in five years, says Janick Barger, director of the program that offers three 10-week French courses a year.
"We have a 50 percent decrease compared to the past two years, and it is a bit upsetting," Barger says. "These are individual decisions, though, so the alliance is not taking it as a personal attack."
A recent survey of U.S. universities and French Alliance language schools also revealed a dip in demand for French language courses, particularly in the Southeast, says Chantal Man?s-Bonnisseau, cultural attach? to the French Embassy in Washington.
Most college students, she says, registered for classes before French and U.S. leaders began scowling at one another over the war in Iraq this spring.
"We'll know better in September if cooling U.S.-France relations have affected university enrollment in French studies," Man?s-Bonnisseau said during last week's convention of international educators in Salt Lake City. "This could actually have the countereffect of increasing interest, because people are now feeling the need to understand French culture more than ever."
Traditionally, French has been considered the language of romance, fashion, fine wine, diplomacy and, well, France -- but its current universe is much more diverse, says George Arcand of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie in Montreal.
Today, there are 51 other Francophone countries, including Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Vietnam, Morocco, Togo, Lebanon, Cameroon and Haiti.
That is why Cottonwood senior Jennifer Hartel is adding French to a language repertoire that already includes Portuguese, Spanish and English. "French will help me get into international business or tourism," she says. "The more languages you know, the more people you can talk to."
For her part, Olympus High French teacher Juliette Durst says English and French already are too intertwined for any boycott to work. "About 40 percent of English is actually French, and the French use a lot of English words, " Durst says.
Think cul-de-sac, ballet, gourmet, filet mignon, debut.
And Cottonwood Principal Garett Muse contends that if German studies survived the politics of World Wars I and II, French programs can outlive the latest "hiccup" in history.
As national trends go, however, the New York-based Modern Language Association of America reports that college-level French language study in the United States declined between 1990 and 1998 -- from 272,472 students to 199,064. German, Italian, Japanese and Russian also had fewer students.
By contrast, Spanish and American Sign Language studies ballooned. The number of college students taking Spanish jumped from 533,944 to 656,590.
In Utah's secondary schools, Spanish instruction has more than tripled during the past two decades, mushrooming from 13,347 students in 1980 to 44,594 this year.
"Language acquisition has changed from just a fun thing to do to something useful that can be a tool, and high school students are beginning to realize that if their r?sum? says they can speak Spanish, that can help them right here in Utah," Muse says. "Obviously, French may not be as much of a tool here."
Nearly a tenth of the state's population is Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2000 census. And more than 70,000 Utahns speak Spanish at home.
Francophone studies-proponent Jean F. Gounard of Buffalo State University is encouraged by the growing role of Spanish.
"Today, Spanish in the United States is not really a foreign language," he says. "More and more, it's a second language, which puts French in the place of most-studied foreign language."
In fact, the fastest-growing group of French students are Latin Americans, says Olivier Chiche-Portiche of Agence EduFrance, an organization that facilitates study abroad in France. "In the past 10 years, the number of Mexican students studying French has quadrupled."
But David Wilford, president of the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France, says he can understand why some Americans have shied away from studying in France this year.
"I had parents asking me if their kids would be safe in France because our president had come out so overtly against the French president, and they saw images on TV of American restaurants dumping out French wines," Wilford says. "If anything, the fact that our students experienced zero hostility shows that Americans need to understand other cultures and languages better in order to be effective."
khsiao@sltrib.com

Originally Posted by ....

The New Yrok Times is reporting, today:

"One day after Britain floated a new compromise proposal before the Security Council, the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "France rejected the British proposal even before the Iraqis did." That sentiment was echoed in London. "I find it extraordinary that without even proper consideration, the French government has decided they will reject these proposals," Foreign Minister Jack Straw said."

Thus the headline to the Times story: U.S. Raises Prospect of Abandoning Effort for U.N. Vote

I roll my eyes only in astonishment as to why Bush ever went to that wacked out bunch in the first place. My hunch is that the reasons center on smoking out France (and to a lesser degree, Germany), and their rather rotten connections to the "evil doers." That the whole U.N. thing has become such a farce, I must admit, makes Bush look somewhat silly and diminished for having bit on a gambit that was doomed from the start.

But I suspect that the adage "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan," might have played a large role in determining Bush's choice: With a solid, quick and decisive victory in Iraq (or so the generals tell us), behind him, it will be the French who will ultimately play the orphan.

And not the victor, U.S. President George W. Bush. :wink:

March 13, 2003
The French Connection
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON
France, China and Syria all have a common reason for keeping American and British troops out of Iraq: the three nations may not want the world to discover that their nationals have been illicitly supplying Saddam Hussein with materials used in building long-range surface-to-surface missiles.

We're not talking about short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles, which Saddam is ostentatiously destroying to help his protectors avert an invasion, nor his old mobile Scuds. The delivery system for mass destruction warheads requires a much more sophisticated propulsion system and fuels.

If you were running the Iraqi ballistic missiles project, where in the world would you go to buy the chemical that is among the best binders for solid propellant?

Answer: to 116 DaWu Road in Zibo, a city in the Shandong Province of China, where a company named Qilu Chemicals is a leading producer of a transparent liquid rubber named hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, familiarly known in the advanced-rocket trade as HTPB.

But you wouldn't want the word "chemicals" to appear anywhere on the purchase because that might alert inspectors enforcing sanctions, so you employ a couple of cutouts. One is an import-export company with which Qilu Chemicals often does business.

To be twice removed from the source, you would turn to CIS Paris, a Parisian broker that is active in dealings of many kinds with Baghdad. Its director is familiar with the order but denies being the agent.

A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus (fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline today) and was received there by a trading company that was an intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user. The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq.

Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program. What rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and usually on credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no use for HTPB. But cash-starved Syria is the conduit for missile supplies to cash-flush Saddam, as this shipment demonstrates. We will have to wait until after the war to find out how much other weaponry, for what huge fees, Saddam has stored in currently un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.

The French connection ? brokering the deal among the Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi buyer ? is no great secret to the world's arms merchants. French intelligence has long been aware of it. The requirement for a French export license as well as U.N. sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria.

I'm also told that a contract was signed last April in Paris for five tons of 99 percent unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine, another advanced missile fuel, which is produced by France's Soci?t? Nationale des Poudre et Explosifs. In addition, Iraqi attempts to buy an oxidizer for solid propellant missiles, ammonium perchlorate, were successful, at least on paper. Both chemicals, like HTPB, require explicit approval by the U.N. Sanctions Committee before they can be sold to Iraq.

Perhaps a few intrepid members of the Chirac Adoration Society, formerly known as the French media, will ask France's lax export-control authorities about these shipments. U.N. inspectors looking at Iraq's El Sirat trading company might try to follow its affiliate, the Gudia Bureau, to dealings in Paris.

Is this account what journalists call a "keeper," one held back for publication at a critical moment, made more newsworthy by the Security Council debate? No; I've been poking around for only about a week, starting with data originating from an Arab source, not from the C.I.A. (Anti-Kurdish analysts at Langley have it in for me for embarrassing them for 18 months on Al Qaeda's ties to Saddam, especially in the terrorist Ansar enclave in Iraqi Kurdistan.)

This detail about the France-China-Syria-Iraq propellant collaboration makes for dull reading, but reveals some of the motivation behind the campaign of those nations to suppress the truth. The truth, however, will out.




Posted for discussion purposes only

Rumsfeld was on board Of Company That Sold North Korea two nuclear power plants.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was on the board of technology giant ABB when it won a deal to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants.
swissinfo February 21, 2003

Weapons experts say waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called ?dirty bombs?.

The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang.

The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea?s east coast.

Rumsfeld ? who is one of the Bush administration?s most strident ?hardliners? on North Korea ? was a member of ABB?s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post.

Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld ?was at nearly all the board meetings? during his decade-long involvement with the company.

Maybe, maybe not

However, he declined to indicate whether Rumsfeld was made aware of the nuclear contract with North Korea.

?This is a good question, but I couldn?t comment on that because we never disclose the protocols of the board meetings,? Eberhardt said.

?Maybe this was a discussion point of the board, maybe not.?

The defense secretary?s role at ABB during the late 1990s has become a bone of contention in Washington.

The ABB contract was a consequence of a 1994 deal between the US and Pyongyang to allow construction of two reactors in exchange for a freeze on the North?s nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea revealed last year that it had secretly continued its nuclear weapons programme, despite its obligations under the deal with Washington.

The Bush government has repeatedly used the agreement to criticise the former Clinton administration for being too soft on North Korea. Rumsfeld?s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, has been among the most vocal critics of the 1994 weapons accord.

Dirty bombs

Weapons experts have also speculated that waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called ?dirty bombs?.

Rumsfeld?s position at ABB could prove embarrassing for the Bush administration since while he was a director he was also active on issues of weapons proliferation, chairing the 1998 congressional Ballistic Missile Threat commission.

The commission suggested the Clinton-era deal with Pyongyang gave too much away because ?North Korea maintains an active weapons of mass destruction programme, including a nuclear weapons programme?.
From Zurich to Pyongyang

At the same time, Rumsfeld was travelling to Zurich for ABB?s quarterly board-meetings.

Eberhardt said it was possible that the North Korea deal never crossed the ABB boardroom desk.

?At the time, we generated a lot of big orders in the power generation business [worth] around $1 billion?[so] a $200 million contract was, so to speak, a smaller one.?

When asked whether a deal with a country such as North Korea ? a communist state with declared nuclear intentions ? should have been brought to the ABB board?s attention, Eberhardt told swissinfo:

?Yes, maybe. But so far we haven?t any evidence for that because the protocols were never disclosed. So maybe it was a discussion point, maybe not,? says Eberhardt.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clark, recently told ?Newsweek? magazine that ?Secretary Rumsfeld does not recall it being brought before the board at any time?.

It was a long time ago

Today, ABB says it no longer has any involvement with the North Korean power plants, due to come on line in 2007 and 2008.

The company finalised the sale of its nuclear business in early 2000 to the British-based BNFL group.

swissinfo, Jacob Greber
? Copyright Swiss info SRI

Ths following is posted here for educational and discussion purposes only:


French Headscarf Ban Sparks Global Protests
Demonstrations Also Expected in U.S., Canada
By ELAINE GANLEY, AP

PARIS (Jan. 17) - Shouting ''The veil is my choice,'' hundreds of people marched in Paris on Saturday as part of global protests against the French government's plan to ban Muslim headscarves in schools.

France says Muslim headscarves must be barred from schools to keep them secular and avoid religious strife.

Muslims from all over France took part in the Paris rally, expected to draw at least 10,000. Many of the protesters were women in headscarves and bearded men in robes.

''We're here for our liberty,'' said Fatiha Hossol, from the southeastern city of Lyon. ''It's our religious obligation to honor our God.''

Algerian-born Kawtar Fawzy, 30, also traveled from Lyon. ''When I came here, they told me France was the land of human rights. I found out it's the opposite,'' she said, amid protesters waving French flags.

From London to Baghdad, people around the world took to the streets Saturday to show opposition to the proposal to ban religious attire, including the headscarf, in French public schools.

The government, worried about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, intends to enact the law for the start of the 2004-2005 school year in September. It says Muslim scarves and other obvious religious symbols must be barred from schools to keep them secular and avoid religious strife.

But, many Islamic leaders say the law will stigmatize France's estimated 5 million Muslims, who make up 8 percent of the population.

In London, several hundred people demonstrated across from the French Embassy in the upscale Knightsbridge area, waving signs and chanting: ''If this is democracy, we say: 'No, merci!'''

''The (French) government is isolating Muslims and setting a dangerous precedent,'' said Ihtisham Hibatullah,'' spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain. ''Muslims see it as an aggravation.''

Dozens of women, veiled in black scarves, marched through the main city of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, to express their solidarity with Muslims in France.

''Why should anyone interfere with what I want to wear. If I revolt against this transgression I will be called an extremist. Is it fair?'' said Asiya Andrabi, whose Dukhtaran-e-Millat, or Daughters of Faith, is a radical separatist group that demands Kashmir's merger with Pakistan.

Other protests were expected in the United States and Canada in what would be the biggest coordinated demonstration against a law that would also ban Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in French public schools.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said such protests are not a positive contribution to the debate.

''If there is a protest one day, there will be a counter-protest the next,'' he said Friday.

Saturday's march through northeastern Paris to the Place de la Nation was called by the Party of French Muslims. Before the rally began, a small group of men pulled out a prayer rug and said prayers at the Place de la Republique.

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Mosque of Paris and president of the French council of the Muslim religion, discouraged Muslims from attending, saying the protest would only exacerbate the anti-Muslim climate and create tensions for them in Europe.

He has called for calm among France's Muslims ''because we absolutely do not want confrontation.'' Boubakeur's French Council of the Muslim Faith serves as a link to the government.

Protests also were expected in other French cities and outside French consulates and embassies in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto in Canada, organizers said.

About 3,000 people took part in a similar protest in Paris on Dec. 21. More than half were women, girls and even young children wearing the ''hijab,'' or headscarf. Protests have taken place elsewhere, too. Earlier this month, 700 Muslims marched through the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

In Iraq, an Islamic group distributed an open letter to Chirac in mosques calling for the government to reverse its position. A demonstration drew fewer than 100 students Saturday at Baghdad's Al Mustansiriya University.

Shaheen Kazi, national office manager at the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada, said protests were expected to draw a few thousand people.

''The hijab is so central to the Muslim woman's identity,'' Kazi said. ''If we don't stand up for this issue when it happens in a European country or anywhere else, then it could be like a wave that could carry on throughout Europe and then we don't know how far it would spread.''

In London, Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien said the British government supported the right of all people to display religious symbols.

''Whilst it is for individual countries to decide, in Britain we are comfortable with the expression of religion, seen in the searing of the hijab, crucifixes or the kippa,'' O'Brien said in a statement. ''Integration does not require assimilation.''


01-17-04 0942EST

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Originally Posted by Titus Sabinus Parthicus

Ths following is posted here for educational and discussion purposes only:


French Headscarf Ban Sparks Global Protests
Demonstrations Also Expected in U.S., Canada
By ELAINE GANLEY, AP

PARIS (Jan. 17) - Shouting ''The veil is my choice,'' hundreds of people marched in Paris on Saturday as part of global protests against the French government's plan to ban Muslim headscarves in schools.

France says Muslim headscarves must be barred from schools to keep them secular and avoid religious strife.

Muslims from all over France took part in the Paris rally, expected to draw at least 10,000. Many of the protesters were women in headscarves and bearded men in robes.

''We're here for our liberty,'' said Fatiha Hossol, from the southeastern city of Lyon. ''It's our religious obligation to honor our God.''

Algerian-born Kawtar Fawzy, 30, also traveled from Lyon. ''When I came here, they told me France was the land of human rights. I found out it's the opposite,'' she said, amid protesters waving French flags.

From London to Baghdad, people around the world took to the streets Saturday to show opposition to the proposal to ban religious attire, including the headscarf, in French public schools.

The government, worried about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, intends to enact the law for the start of the 2004-2005 school year in September. It says Muslim scarves and other obvious religious symbols must be barred from schools to keep them secular and avoid religious strife.

But, many Islamic leaders say the law will stigmatize France's estimated 5 million Muslims, who make up 8 percent of the population.

In London, several hundred people demonstrated across from the French Embassy in the upscale Knightsbridge area, waving signs and chanting: ''If this is democracy, we say: 'No, merci!'''

''The (French) government is isolating Muslims and setting a dangerous precedent,'' said Ihtisham Hibatullah,'' spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain. ''Muslims see it as an aggravation.''

Dozens of women, veiled in black scarves, marched through the main city of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, to express their solidarity with Muslims in France.

''Why should anyone interfere with what I want to wear. If I revolt against this transgression I will be called an extremist. Is it fair?'' said Asiya Andrabi, whose Dukhtaran-e-Millat, or Daughters of Faith, is a radical separatist group that demands Kashmir's merger with Pakistan.

Other protests were expected in the United States and Canada in what would be the biggest coordinated demonstration against a law that would also ban Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in French public schools.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said such protests are not a positive contribution to the debate.

''If there is a protest one day, there will be a counter-protest the next,'' he said Friday.

Saturday's march through northeastern Paris to the Place de la Nation was called by the Party of French Muslims. Before the rally began, a small group of men pulled out a prayer rug and said prayers at the Place de la Republique.

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Mosque of Paris and president of the French council of the Muslim religion, discouraged Muslims from attending, saying the protest would only exacerbate the anti-Muslim climate and create tensions for them in Europe.

He has called for calm among France's Muslims ''because we absolutely do not want confrontation.'' Boubakeur's French Council of the Muslim Faith serves as a link to the government.

Protests also were expected in other French cities and outside French consulates and embassies in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto in Canada, organizers said.

About 3,000 people took part in a similar protest in Paris on Dec. 21. More than half were women, girls and even young children wearing the ''hijab,'' or headscarf. Protests have taken place elsewhere, too. Earlier this month, 700 Muslims marched through the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

In Iraq, an Islamic group distributed an open letter to Chirac in mosques calling for the government to reverse its position. A demonstration drew fewer than 100 students Saturday at Baghdad's Al Mustansiriya University.

Shaheen Kazi, national office manager at the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada, said protests were expected to draw a few thousand people.

''The hijab is so central to the Muslim woman's identity,'' Kazi said. ''If we don't stand up for this issue when it happens in a European country or anywhere else, then it could be like a wave that could carry on throughout Europe and then we don't know how far it would spread.''

In London, Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien said the British government supported the right of all people to display religious symbols.

''Whilst it is for individual countries to decide, in Britain we are comfortable with the expression of religion, seen in the searing of the hijab, crucifixes or the kippa,'' O'Brien said in a statement. ''Integration does not require assimilation.''

Looks like they're going to have a hard time ignoring the growing tension between our two civilizations. I have a feelign they are trying to make it an "American" and "Israeli" problem when in fact they are in this with us whether they want to be or not.

Originally Posted by Sean Love

Looks like they're going to have a hard time ignoring the growing tension between our two civilizations. I have a feeling they are trying to make it an "American" and "Israeli" problem when in fact they are in this with us whether they want to be or not.

Then again, I remember reading once about a Russian novel, written sometime in the mid 19th century, in which the Western World (including Russia, in the novel) is fighting a losing war for survival against a revived China at some time in the future. The French think to save their own skins in the end by betraying the rest of the Western World, and helping China win. I don't remember if they were able to accomplish their goal in doing so. (Probably not.)

Originally Posted by Titus Sabinus Parthicus

Originally Posted by Sean Love

Looks like they're going to have a hard time ignoring the growing tension between our two civilizations. I have a feeling they are trying to make it an "American" and "Israeli" problem when in fact they are in this with us whether they want to be or not.

Then again, I remember reading once about a Russian novel, written sometime in the mid 19th century, in which the Western World (including Russia, in the novel) is fighting a losing war for survival against a revived China at some time in the future. The French think to save their own skins in the end by betraying the rest of the Western World, and helping China win. I don't remember if they were able to accomplish their goal in doing so. (Probably not.)

Sounds about right.

Here is a website of graffiti that was written by protestors during the May 68' Uprising in Paris, some of the quotes are very chilling and remind me a lot of what Young Boomers in America were saying at the same time.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm

The author commments on the long standing distrust of "perfidious Albion", a distrust that is reciprocated by England. And according to the author the French extend this same distrust to the USA, and fear a Brit/Yank plot to take over the world.

Charles Steele posted:

"Regarding the French Saeculum, for WW1, France was definitely in a high mode, while the USA and Britain were in unravelings. I do agree that the French awakening was during the 1920's, but for the 1930's due to political polarization the unraveling came then.

"Like the US civil war, the French WW2 crisis came very early (with its invasion by Germany-and was short and severe. Like the Reconstruction-Gilded Age era, the French high had a slow and painful transition with two parts (1946-58, and 1958-68) the former of which is counted as transitional (fourth republic), and the second part (early fifth republic) is counted as a true high. The coups against President De Gaulle were unwanted aftershocks from the crisis and semi-high period."

From print out derived from paleo 4T site, Beyond America Geographic Distribution of Cycles, Mar 26 2000 post.

discussion

Testing. Is a reply possible?

Hello, hello! Welcome back!?

Hi
Thanks, but I am having difficulting sending more than a one sentence reply. Is there something I should do?
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Not able to post a paragraph. Are there certain words that I should avoid?

Wall Street Journal

Why French Parents Are Superior

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...457473816.html

Evidence that French turnings are 180 degrees out of sync

Originally Posted by csellefson

Hi
Thanks, but I am having difficulting sending more than a one sentence reply. Is there something I should do?
Thanks

Hey, sorry, I think the forum's anti-spam measures can be a little tough to deal with until you've posted a bit. I think if you post more you'll be able to to write longer messages with more pictures & links allowed.

Pretty interesting about French parenting, though. I definitely feel like a lot of Americans have gone overboard on indulging in their childrens' whims. We will have to swing pretty far the other way to hit the other extreme, but seeing as we're out of synch with France what if anything does that tell us about their position in the saeculum?

When I read the synopsis of "Tiger Mom" I was really offended by the whole idea. Understanding Chinese culture helps though. In China children in a lot of ways amount to a parents retirement. There is a lot of give and take between parents and child and social pressure to be a xiaoxun child, meaning "good and responsible to family" My wife's cousin is laid to rest in an unmarked grave because she died before her parents and is seen as being not xiaoxun. This illustrates the Chinese feeling of responsibility to parents. I think at times it leads many Chinese parents to see their children as an investment even as far as money goes. So when a man gets married the man's parents buy a house for the couple. You can start to see the give and take. This is not to say their isn't love in Chinese families (They are extremely tight in most cases), but also there is this other monetary aspect going on as well.

I read the synopsis of this French parenting book and I was like, "Heck yeah." This book seems overdue and I hope it has a great effect on our culture. The idea is that the parent has actual authority, which think we've lost in the states. Seeing parents try to reason with 5 year olds is really sad. Not that we shouldn't give reasons, but kids need to learn to listen to their parents first and then ask why. In the article I read they compared this French book to "Tiger Mom", but mentioned it focuses more on social things than the earlier book.

When all is said and the whole world wants to tell Americans how to raise their kids. haha

Frankly, I was appalled by the Tiger Mom from last year and thought her methods were abusive: there is a vast chasm between wanting your child to be obedient and respectful and treating your child as an extension of yourself, as little more than a plaything with no respect for their hopes and dreams. In fact, I have seen the results of this type of parenting up close and personal with Asian friends who grew up with it. IT WAS AWFUL. The parents (and believe me, I met them) were obsessed with face and their child bringing honor upon the family and had no qualms about sacrificing their child's dreams, wishes, and well being while substituting their own: whatever prestigious occupation, whatever fad, whether it be endless hours practicing pieces by Chopin and Mozart or forcing their kid to take the AP physics test (even though the kid had zero talent or interest in the sciences,) it was all about THEM and their sick need for praise from others, never about the kid, whom they treated like a plaything. They destroyed their child's sense of self and ability to be independent: my best friend in college could barely make a declarative sentence by the time I first met her and had no idea how to do the pragmatic things in life, like how to get herself on a bus to Boston ,how to take out a loan, or how to stand up for herself because all that was taken over by her psycho authoritarian parents. (They acted perfectly civil and nice to me, but it never occurred to them that when they sent their daughter those emails drilling her to be exactly what they wanted her to be that I would read it, concerned over my friend in the fetal position and sobbing-when I saw her next, it took every inch of my self control not to try and deck her mother and grab the expensive Talbots clothes from her hand and burn them: my friend was talked into getting a joint account with her mother so she could store money she made working at movie theatres during the summer, and then the mother stole the cash with the excuse that the daughter "owed" her!) CONTINUED

(Sorry, I have to do it this way because I am on an iPad.) Bluntly put, xiaoxun my fucking ass! Nobody deserves to be buried in an unmarked grave simply because she or he did not turn out to be the child you wanted. I think it is damning that the highest rates of suicide in young people in the world are found in Korea, China, and Japan. I also think it is very interesting that for hundreds of years there has been no alternative to this way of life, where children are expected to be subservient to their parents even into adulthood. (I have also seen what happens when these families move to America and the kids see an alternative way of living and run towards it like a cop to a donut factory, and the parents are actually somehow surprised: how DARE they reject being treated like a puppet! Where is the worship (oops, I mean respect) for elders due to a parent, when I have sacrificed so much for my child (even if the money saved was intended to give me face when she aced the piano recital on pain of death?!) There are an awful lot of engineers and doctors in China, but funnily enough, fewer of them are happy in their professions and fewer come up with anything creative within the trades, because who the hell would want to build a car that drives itself when deep down they can't stand gettting up in the morning to go to work?!

As for the thing with French parenting, I take it with a grain of salt. They are a bit behind us in the saeculums, and frankly, this way of parenting was once in vogue in the 70s and early eighties in America. Now those kids are grown up and seem to want the opposite for their kids, and in a lot of cases I have seen, they overdo it and coddle their babes a little too much out of fear of not being responsive enough, like the parents of the early 80s were. They try to negotiate when Greggers needs to take a bath when they should do what my Mom and Dad did: we had a routine where one parent made supper, we ate as a family by 7:00, by 7:45 we were taking our baths, after our baths we'd watch the Muppet Show, eat our dessert, and go to sleep. There was no deviation, no negotiation, and if you talked back, you got a swat on the behind an sent to your room. Simple and effective. You don't need to feed them wheat germ and demand they listen to Mozart in utero, you can and should give the finger to the mommy wars because in the end, it is YOUR kid, and you should limit their time on the video games and television so they can go outside to play. Above all, love them for who they are and though they should be taught to stretch themselves in school, they should not be set up to fail either or drilled to death. That way, as adults, they can be happy AND a success, and unafraid to try new things.

When the Fifth column failed its mission, the real mastermind shows its true face. With special task force and air attack, they took over Libya. Now when French special force were captured, MaCain jumps out. It's still a gunboat style looting war in the name of "democracy".
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France’s secret war against the Syrian people
By OzHouse On February 25, 2012 · voltairenet.org

During the assault on the rebel stronghold in the Homs district of Bab Amr, the Syrian army took more than 1,500 prisoners, mostly foreigners. Of these, a dozen French nationals requested the status of prisoner of war, refusing to give their identity, rank and unit of assignment. One of them is a Colonel working for the DGSE transmission service.

In arming the Wahhabi Legion and feeding it with satellite intelligence, France conducted a secret war against the Syrian army, which caused more than 3,000 deaths among the military, and more than 1,500 among civilians in ten months of fighting. ….
France has sought Russia’s assistance to negotiate with Syria the release of its prisoners of war.
http://ozhouse.org/2012/02/25/frances-secret-war-against-the-syrian-people/

This may tell you why Strauss Kahn (former president of IMF) was in trouble. His party leads over Sarcozy in coming president election. Sarcozy supports US' war in Mid-east. That's why Kahn is tarnished. A tactic to help Sarcozy to stay in his president seat.

Strauss-Kahn questioned in prostitution ring inquiry
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02-21-2012
Strauss-Kahn back in the news another a sex scandal. This one appears to have less wiggle room than the last.
Video & article at link......
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17110618