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Saturday, January 18, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:53 AM:
French news round-up:Le Monde leads with Chirac's "Oh crap" moment of the day, that being the moment when "Bush declares himself ready to go into battle alone" (presumably he'll bring the Marines). And thus, as Den Beste concluded (scroll down a few), Europe's choices are to work with us or not matter.
Le Figaro leads with "Chirac hopes to give the UN more time." They have warheads ready to deliver chemical agents. They handed a crap declaration to the UN and were basically unrepentant about doing so. Iraq has repeatedly given the implication by its actions that it takes the UN for craven fools more interested in having a smiley face on the top of the report than actually doing anything. Does Chirac really want to prove them right?
By the way, for all those yearning for the civilized European way of doing these as opposed to America's hick, backward, outdated customs:
"The intolerable vengeance of the rapists."
Briefly, a junior high school girl (now 14) was gang-raped last year. Because of the young age of the rapists, some of the five will be out at the end of the month. Which promises to make things even harder for the girl who is constantly taunted, targeted in graffitti, etc. by friends of the rapists who think she should have kept her mouth shut rather than messing up their buddies' lives. The rapists, for their part, told her that if she turned them in they'd rape her little sister. Her family wound up moving because of the threats they were receiving. And the city, the school, and the police seem powerless to do a damn thing about it. Perhaps because France is as backward as anywhere else and nobody wants to get involved in protecting a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks from rapists better placed in society. Check out what some people said about this 13 (!) year old:
Nadia, 16: "She consented. She smiled when she was out walking with them, all proud. Me, if I'm with a guy alone my father raps me upside the head... You know what the guys had in mind. Me, I'm with [the guys], they're from my area, they're good."
A seventeen year old and his twelve year old brother: "Even in winter, she wore skirts and sandals. It's a shame what happened... but she was asking for it." Shame they didn't identify those two. Probably a few fathers of young girls in the neighborhood who could use the info.
"Tease" and "bitch" were among a few of the adjectives offered by other teens interviewed.
This is in Roubaux by the way. Must be a great source of pride to live there.
Libé leads with "A new pacifist generation in the US." It's younger. More net savvy. And much much much smaller!
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