Since February 17, workers at Total's six oil refineries in France have gone on an indefinite nationwide strike to support their colleagues at Flanders refinery, near Dunkirk in northern France. The site faces permanent closure, threatening some 800 jobs. The strike may cause fuel shortages in France in coming days, as crude-processing operations shut down.
I recently came across, through a YouTube video, a rather unique French public service announcement. It encouraged heterosexual men to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS by using a condom before engaging in sexual contact. Predictable enough subject for a PSA, one might think, but the video's concept was both amusing and novel. While the American mind would likely appreciate the humor, it would also deem it too graphic to be aired on network television and probably cable as well. American liberalism has, I realize, a long standing Francophone tradition, just as American conservative thought has an equally lengthy history of criticizing it, so my point is not to cater directly to either camp. Somewhere between the two is something close to the truth and as such I seek to find it.
To get to my point, in France, sex is everywhere, and yet attitudes towards sexuality in one's personal life are often more traditional than in the United States. While on the continent, one often encounters nudity on billboards, street signs, and shop windows while out and about, but the attitude of most residents is that the body is a natural entity, as are public depictions of it without the benefit of clothes to disguise the objectionable parts. To us, of course, the only truly socially acceptable manner of presentation regarding the unveiled human body is in the art gallery and even then some people have been known to register their visible discomfort. Furthermore, we deem nudity or frank depictions of nudity in any form to often only be granted as a privilege based on reaching a certain age and with it some perceived degree of maturity, believing that children and minors ought not to be exposed to its supposedly corrupting influences until the age where they can make an informed decision whether or not to partake. Put that way, it sounds almost as though nudity is some health hazard, like smoking or consuming too much alcohol. Still, for all the energy we expend spinning out cautionary tales and guilt-laden commandments, one would think we ought to expect more for our efforts.
Crossposted at Daily Kos. Look in the Comments Section of Daily Kos for more cartoons on the economy and sports. Somehow, I couldn't fit them in the main text of the diary.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
Overlooked in the coverage of the passing of the great Senator Ted Kennedy is this ground shaking news out of France.
France's leading banks agreed Tuesday to curbs on the way they award bonuses, including penalties for traders who lose money for their companies, as part of a push by President Nicolas Sarkozy for worldwide limits on bonus payouts.
~snip~
He stressed, though, that international rules are needed to keep French banks competitive, and Sarkozy promised to push the G20 meeting next month in the United States to adopt such measures.
"While the first signs of stabilization of the economy are here, we are seeing bad habits coming back. I can't accept that," Sarkozy told the bankers.
"No one has forgotten that the financial sector is at the origin of this crisis."
Monaco is a tiny independent nation, tucked into the southern French coast. Its national defense is the responsibility of France, but it is a constitutional monarchy, ruled by the Grimaldi family since 1297, and a full member of the United Nations. The vast majority of its population is wealthy foreigners, who live there because it is a tax haven. Its chief industry is tourism, and its botanic gardens and casino are world famous.
We stopped in for just a couple hours, on a drive from Torino to Nice, and the gardens already were closed.
Near the town of Nimes, and built either in the last century BCE or the first century CE, the aqueduct and bridge known as the Pont du Gard may be the best remaining example of the genius that was Roman engineering.
By the beginning of the 14th Century, Italy was wracked by wars between rival religious and political factions, rival merchant states, and rival factions within these factions and merchant states. The "Holy" "Roman" "Emperor" Heinrich VII invaded, but failed to take Rome. And amidst this violent turmoil, Giotto reinvented art and launched the southern Renaissance, while Dante and Petrarch reinvented poetry. And also amidst this turmoil, and with his papacy threatened, Pope Clement V, under pressure from the French King Philippe IV le Bel, moved the papal court to Avignon, which was not actually in France, but was in the Venaissan enclave granted to the papacy by its Angevin clients. The next seven popes would be French, but not all Catholic nations would accept them. The Catholic Church again would be torn by schisms.
The 14th Century saw Europe torn apart and reinvented, and France was at the heart of it. The Black Death would kill perhaps eight million people, in France alone. Jews and lepers would be burned, on order of King Philip V. The Hundred Years War with England would rage. The Capetian dynasty would end. The Dukes of Burgundy, who controlled not only that modern French region, but also what are now the modern Benelux nations, sided with England, attempting to form a sort of middle kingdom, between the war-ravaged France and Germany. Under their patronage, Claus Sluter would launch the northern Renaissance.
In the 1330s, Pope Benedict XII began the massive renovation of the Avignon ecclesiastical palace, tranforming it into the grand Palais des Papes. In 1377, St. Catherine of Siena convinced Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome, which soon led to yet more schisms within the Church, including the election of an alternate pope in Avignon.
Decided to send you a note on lunch in rural France, on politics and how the French now perceive us since the election. And, maybe a little more.
In Arzal, right now, I've taken a break from the lunch we are having with Bertrand, Nadine, the kids and Joe and Martine from up the street. In September Joe and some of his friends shot and killed a few wild boar. Seems that wild boar are everywhere here, a bad overpopulation problem, and hunting them is becoming a passion with the French who go in for such things. As you know, I don't care one way or the other about hunting. I won't do it for it doesn't interest me, but if others wish to, well c'est la guerre.
Bertrand took the boar meat and combined it with carrots, red wine, onion, celery, mushrooms, prunes soaked in alcohol (!) and many herbs. Cooked it for 4 hours. Also made potatoes mashed. Wonderful preparation. The lunch started with two bottles of Champaign and many toasts to Obama!. They love my rental car, a little Citron C1, complete with my last Obama/Biden bumper sticker stuck to the rear bumper. The French are absolutely geeked about the election results. Everyone's just so freaking happy!! It's suddenly a good time to be an American abroad in the world.
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar said Friday it was not ready to let in foreign aid workers, rejecting international pressure to allow experts into the isolated nation where disease and starvation are stalking cyclone survivors.
One week after the devastating storm killed tens of thousands, Myanmar's ruling generals -- deeply suspicious of the outside world -- said the country needed outside aid for those still alive, but would deliver it themselves.
The foreign ministry announcement came as a top UN official warned time was running out to move in disaster experts and supplies to prevent diseases that could claim even more victims.
Instead, the ministry said some relief workers who arrived on an aid flight from Qatar on Wednesday had been deported.
Al Jazeera has an exemplary in-depth analysis of this tragedy, including an extended round table featuring UN Humanitarian Chief John Holmes, Bo Hla Tint, spokesperson for the Burmese Government in Exile and Marie Lall of the Asia Programme at Chatham House:
Biofuels are of increasing interest as an alternative to fossil fuels. This pure image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the International Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from oil to a not yet defined renewable fuel economy. But, at what price?
From BBC News:
Agriculture minister Michel Barnier said Europe could not remain passive and leave the situation to the markets.
He said producing biofuels, a key part of the EU's plans to tackle climate change, was a "crime against humanity".
crossposted from dailykos at the suggestion of Jay Elias
The second paragraph of Nick Kristof's piece, after recognizing Condoleeza Rice's correct observation that we cannot simply invade a 3rd Muslim country, reads as follows:
But this week marks the 14th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide - the last time we said "never again." And while Ms. Rice is right that we can't send in American ground troops, there are concrete steps that President Bush can take if he wants to end his shameful passivity
I am no expert in this part of the world, nor in military and diplomatic affairs. I am also a Quaker, and prefer the use of diplomacy to that of force. But I also refuse to stand silently by in the face of slaughter. And I think Kristof's Memo to Bush on Darfur should be mandatory reading, and the starting point of serious discussions. Let me explain why.
Protesters have forced police to extinguish the Olympic torch amid heavy demonstrations as it set off across Paris.
Officers in jogging gear who had been escorting the flame put it out and took it on a bus, apparently to get it away from the protesters.
The flame, which started out at the Eiffel Tower amid tight security, was being carried down a road next to the Seine near demonstrators carrying Tibetan flags when the relay was stopped.
Sky News has footage of the security guarding the torch, including the police on rollerblades:
cross posted from The Dream Antilles Ingrid Betancourt In Captivity (11/30/07)
Ingrid Betancourt, while campaigning for the presidency of Colombia, was kidnapped by FARC on February 23, 2002. More than six years later, she remains a hostage somewhere in Colombia. She suffers from hepatitis B and leishmaniasis, a skin disease caused by insect bites. She is also rumored to be losing the will to live. She is the public face of kidnapping in Colombia. She is the most famous of hundreds of hostages. Unlike most of the hostages, she has ties outside the country.
First, more news about brutality being used against protesters in Qinghai:
"They were beating up monks, which will only infuriate ordinary people," the source said of the protest on Tuesday in Qinghai's Xinghai county.
A resident in the area confirmed the demonstration, saying that paramilitaries dispersed the 200 to 300 protesters after half and hour, that the area was crawling with armed security forces and that workers were kept inside their offices.
The Beijing source said resentment at the paramilitary presence around Lhasa's monasteries prompted one monk at the Ramoche temple to hang himself.
snip
"It's very harsh. They are taking in and questioning anyone who saw the protests," the source said. "The prisons are full. Detainees are being held at prisons in counties outside Lhasa."
In yet another fascinating interview, demographer Emmanuel Tood (best known for his prediction - based on demographic trends - of the Soviet Union collapse, and his more recent predictions of the "end of the US empire") discusses Iran at length, and suggests that demographic trends in the Muslim world, and in particular in Iran, suggest a massive weakening of the influence of religion over their populations, rather than the opposite.
Bringing you one of our famous bilingual two-column diaries from the European Tribune
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
