April 20, 2012

France: meet the voters of Henin Beaumont, Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s stronghold

Front National activists put up Marine Le Pen posters next to the city hall in Henin-BeaumontWith the first round of the French presidential election coming up on Sunday, this week we take a tour of France, to see what the voters are interested in. Today we go to Henin-Beaumont, a small town in the north of France in a region blighted by high unemployment. Far right candidate Marine le Pen calls it her fiefdom. Her protectionist, anti-immigrant policies have found favour with an estimated 30 per cent of voters.

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Filed under: France Front National Politics National Front Marine Le Pen Henin Beaumont Election Elections MP3 Podcast Audio 
April 19, 2012
Paris, France Marine Le Pen, the National Front party leader and their candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, sings the national anthem with supporters on stage at the end of a campaign rally (via Reuters.com)

Paris, France

Marine Le Pen, the National Front party leader and their candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, sings the national anthem with supporters on stage at the end of a campaign rally (via Reuters.com)

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Filed under: France Paris National Front Front National Marine Le Pen Election Elections Rally Photography 
March 8, 2012
France Campaign posters for the ADMD association (Association for the Right to Die in Dignity) show France’s incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy and far-right Front National (FN) party’s candidate for the 2012 presidential election Marine Le Pen lying in a hospital bed with a sign reading: M. candidate, do we have to put you in such a position to change your mind about euthanasia? (via Telegraph)

France

Campaign posters for the ADMD association (Association for the Right to Die in Dignity) show France’s incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy and far-right Front National (FN) party’s candidate for the 2012 presidential election Marine Le Pen lying in a hospital bed with a sign reading: M. candidate, do we have to put you in such a position to change your mind about euthanasia? (via Telegraph)

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Filed under: France Euthanasia Right to Die ADMD Association for the Right to Die in Dignity Nicolas Sarkozy Marine Le Pen Poster Posters Campaigns 
January 9, 2012
Saint-Denis, France Marine Le Pen, leader of the French extreme-right wing National Front party and candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, holds a campaign rally in La Plaine-Saint-Denis. (via ZUMA)

Saint-Denis, France

Marine Le Pen, leader of the French extreme-right wing National Front party and candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, holds a campaign rally in La Plaine-Saint-Denis. (via ZUMA)

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Filed under: France Saint-Denis La Plaine-Saint-Denis Politicis Rally Political Rally Marine Le Pen Front National National Front Photography 
January 7, 2012
France proclaims 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc France will mark the reputed 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc with a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy to her birthplace. President Sarkozy will travel to Domremy, the village said to have been her birthplace, where he will unveil a plaque in the home where she is thought to have been born. Mr Sarkozy will also visit Vaucouleurs, also in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, where Joan of Arc began her campaign to push the English out of France and put Charles VII on the throne. Mr Sarkozy and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are battling over the mantle of the French patron saint Joan of Arc, a surprise player in the upcoming presidential election. The two leaders are to stage rival celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the birth of the 15th-century Catholic martyr who has been appropriated by the far-right partly for her booting out of medieval English “immigrants”. The teenage peasant led the French army against the English after experiencing religious visions and was later burned at the stake, but her broad appeal to French of all political colours has ensured her immortality. (via Telegraph)

France proclaims 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc

France will mark the reputed 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc with a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy to her birthplace.

President Sarkozy will travel to Domremy, the village said to have been her birthplace, where he will unveil a plaque in the home where she is thought to have been born.

Mr Sarkozy will also visit Vaucouleurs, also in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, where Joan of Arc began her campaign to push the English out of France and put Charles VII on the throne.

Mr Sarkozy and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are battling over the mantle of the French patron saint Joan of Arc, a surprise player in the upcoming presidential election.

The two leaders are to stage rival celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the birth of the 15th-century Catholic martyr who has been appropriated by the far-right partly for her booting out of medieval English “immigrants”.

The teenage peasant led the French army against the English after experiencing religious visions and was later burned at the stake, but her broad appeal to French of all political colours has ensured her immortality. (via Telegraph)

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Filed under: France History Anniversaries Joan of Arc Domremy Vaucouleurs Nicolas Sarkozy Marine le Pen 
November 29, 2011
France: Guéant promises to slash immigration by ninety per cent in a year

Interior Minister Claude Guéant has promised to bring down immigration in the next year from its present 200,000 a year to 20,000.

Speaking on Europe 1’s Le Grand rendez-vous, he said he agreed with Front National leader Marine Le Pen that the number of immigrants was too high.

He said:

“Why is it too high? Because I want, like the government and the president of the republic, that foreigners who come to live with us become integrated, adopt our laws and adopt our way of life.”

Mr Guéant said the number of immigrants each year was the equivalent of a town such as Rennes, or twice that of Perpignan.

He added that France was not xenophobic but he was against the socialist proposal to extend the right to vote in municipal elections to non-EC residents.

“That could mean we would have foreign mayors. Frankly, I’ve no wish to see in Seine-Saint-Denis, which has a large immigrant population, that the majority of mayors are foreign.

Since 1789 the right to vote had been allied to nationality and people who wanted that right should become French citizens.

A poll for Le Parisien newspaper showed 61% of people were in favour of giving the right to vote to non-EC residents who had lived in France for more than five years. (via The Connexion)

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Filed under: France Politics Migration Immigration Integration Immigrants Claude Guéant Interior Miniter Front National Marine Le Pen Perpignan Municipal Elections Seine-Saint-Denis Politicians Suffrange Right to Vote Voting Rights Immigration Policy 
September 23, 2011
France: praying in Paris streets outlawed Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital’s public spaces secular. Claude Guéant said that ban could later be extended to the rest of France, in particular to the Mediterranean cities of Nice and Marseilles, where “the problem persists”. He promised the new legislation would be followed to the letter as it “hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens”. “My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism, the minister told Le Figaro newspaper. “All Muslim leaders are in agreement,” he insisted. In December when Marine Le Pen, then leader-in-waiting of the far-Right National Front, sparked outrage by likening the practice to the Nazi occupation of Paris in the Second World War “without the tanks or soldiers”. She said it was a “political act of fundamentalists”. (via The Telegraph)

France: praying in Paris streets outlawed

Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital’s public spaces secular.

Claude Guéant said that ban could later be extended to the rest of France, in particular to the Mediterranean cities of Nice and Marseilles, where “the problem persists”.

He promised the new legislation would be followed to the letter as it “hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens”.

“My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism, the minister told Le Figaro newspaper.

“All Muslim leaders are in agreement,” he insisted.

In December when Marine Le Pen, then leader-in-waiting of the far-Right National Front, sparked outrage by likening the practice to the Nazi occupation of Paris in the Second World War “without the tanks or soldiers”. She said it was a “political act of fundamentalists”. (via The Telegraph)

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Filed under: France Paris Religion Prayer Praying Islam Muslims Claude Guéant Marine Le Pen Politics Society Social Cohesion Far-Right 
August 23, 2011
"The EU is a community of values and we export our values just as much as we export our goods and services. And these values are democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. But also a condemnation of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. By remembering we are also sending a signal of what we accept, and what we do not."

— President of the European Parliament logoJerzy Buzek, President of the European Pariament, on the European Day of remembrance of victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes

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Filed under: Europe EU European Union European Parliament Jerzy Buzek Remembrance European Day of Remembrance European Day of Remembrance of Victims of all Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes Ukraine Russia Belarus France Marine le Pen Denmark Danish People's Party Herman Van Rompuy José Manuel Durão Barroso Totalitarianism Authoritarianism Integration Intolerance Anniversaries Observances France Germany Poland Lithuania Latvia Estonia 
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