think france will cave?

[straffo]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Lets look at the french anthenm to see how unxenophobic france is..

Fatherland... Check..

Evil foreign cohorts.. Check...

More fatherland.. Check..

Foreign Mercenary phalanxes... check!!!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors...  Uhhm, ok.. Check!

You look to forget some parts are not in use anymore :

Evil foreign cohorts.. UNCheck...
Foreign Mercenary phalanxes... UNcheck!!!
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors...  Uhhm, ok.. UNCheck!

see : http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa071400ma.htm

[GRUNHERZ]

The first was in response to quiabe saying france was not xenophobic. I merely showed him that according to the anthem that they are. (he set the standard that anthems are indicative of national traits with his god remark about the US anthem)

Also tronski you conveinetly left out these words of mine after I commented on the french anthem.

"BTW none of this is neccesarily ment as a negative judgement agianst your country, its just an observation."

And I allready said i like the song, so its perfectly in keeping with my criricizm of straffo for him not liking it..

Simple. Or are you trying to pick a fight with me?

I'm generally aginst people not liking their anthems, its national tradition and culture and save revolution or other major change  I feel it should be respected - like the flag.

[GRUNHERZ]

Ode an die Freude is the best piece of music ever written, I know the words by heart and I'd have it as humanity's anthem in a second.

But are yu sure France would accept a german language song as her national anthem?

[GRUNHERZ]

I clearly said the Iraqi terrorism is not really realted to this law. Didnt I? And that france shopuldnt give in. Didnt i?

So I really dontr get the point of your post.

But when it starts happening in france, well like I said it will be fun for all involved. France is full of poor unemployed north african muslims. It will be great fun to see them get all sensitive about their religious rights with so much free time on their hands... Should we have the battle of algiers fought on the streets and cafes of paris this time around?

[straffo]

When I write "I don't really like"  it don't imply I hate or don't respect my anthem, it just imply I don't find it up to date and corresponding to the French society as today.

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by straffo
When I write "I don't really like"  it don't imply I hate or don't respect my anthem, it just imply I don't find it up to date and corresponding to the French society as today.

Does it have to be? It represents the (temporarily interrupted) founding of modern france. Thats important enough imo.

What would you write in the modern anthem? About the ww2 resistance and liberation? The cold war? A new "multietnic" france - not really new anyway.

What would be the point?

[deSelys]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
No your anthem is just a bloodthirsty call for revenge and mass murder..
 

then

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Lets look at the french anthenm to see how unxenophobic france is..

Fatherland... Check..

Evil foreign cohorts.. Check...

More fatherland.. Check..

Foreign Mercenary phalanxes... check!!!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors... Uhhm, ok.. Check!
 

and later

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ

You hate your own anthem for being patriotic???

What other one would you have?
 ...

I'm generally aginst people not liking their anthems, its national tradition and culture and save revolution or other major change I feel it should be respected - like the flag.
...
Does it have to be? It represents the (temporarily interrupted) founding of modern france. Thats important enough imo.

Your could teach Kerry how to flip-flop...

"Anthem is call to murder but you have to like it because it's your country..." I mean, I know it's late and you're doing with the wits
God gave you, but you should try to stay coherent within the same thread.

Now go away. You're just trying to bash a country by using the fact that two peole may well be butchered within the next few hours.

Nice agenda.

[-tronski-]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
The first was in response to quiabe saying france was not xenophobic. I merely showed him that according to the anthem that they are. (he set the standard that anthems are indicative of national traits with his god remark about the US anthem)

Also tronski you conveinetly left out these words of mine after I commented on the french anthem.

"BTW none of this is neccesarily ment as a negative judgement agianst your country, its just an observation."

And I allready said i like the song, so its perfectly in keeping with my criricizm of straffo for him not liking it..

Simple. Or are you trying to pick a fight with me?

I'm generally aginst people not liking their anthems, its national tradition and culture and save revolution or other major change  I feel it should be respected - like the flag.

As deSelys as already pointed out at one stage your sledging the french national anthem, pointing it out in detail it spells out  all which is evil with the "terrible xenophobic french govt." , then decideing to take issue with Straffo for not being patriotic enough because he was not particularly enthralled with it ...

My point was perhaps you should pick to one side of an argument and stick to it, but I guess what I should have stated the obvious...your only point in this discussion is to pretty much denounce anything French...after all I don't have to try to pick a fight - hardly, your doing a pretty good job yourself it seems

Your disclaimer wasn't included because it wasn't even in the two pieces of diatribe I quoted, and because it's obviously a falsehood.

 Tronsky

[GRUNHERZ]

It is  bloodthirsty. It does call for revenge. Read the words of the song, its obvious.  Xenophobic too.

Those are facts about the song, and its still a great and important song in history.. And I like it.

Too bad that you need to see things in a binary way.

Also I'm clearly on record here that these kidnappings reeally arent about the french law and that the french must not  give in.

Still i thinkl the law is stupid and that it will cause trouble in the future, especially considering frances large, poor and now perhaps publicly marginalized muslim population.  I have a right to criticize laws I think are unproductive.

I never mentioned the two men in danger, only you did. They are innocent men caught up in a tragedy unrelated to their nations laws. I find it sickening that you felt the need to bring their peril into this argument in order to win a point aginst me. Not to mention that you even had to  construct a straw man argument to do it.  

Perhaps you should go away, your agenda based soloely on personal attacks on me in pointless.

[GRUNHERZ]

So lets see my stating that I like the french anthem is denouncing it, ok trotsky...  

Man thats some funny stuff.

Also in your twisted thinking are anthems supposed to be unpatriotic?

Finally did it escape your observation taht I was arguing with two different people who were expressing two different sentiments.

Quiabe on one hand was saying the French arent xenophobic. Then because he implied anthems were indicative of natinal traits I simply pointed out verses in his anthem that were clearly xenophobic. And then I clearly stated that none of that was a negative judgment on the nation, merely an observation that counters his statement. I added that I like song, and we agrred on that.


Straffo (a different individual from Quiabe) was sayinng he disliked his anthem for being too patriotic. I pointed put that I feel its an important patriotic song in french history that should be respected. And again added that I like the song.


So once again for the very very slow among us:

I like song. (very simply worded for you guys)
It IS obviously a bloodthirsty, xenophobic, revenge filled revolutinary song.  But still a very good one and a very historically important one for france. And it should be their anthem.

Feel free to resume your mindless personal attacks at this time.

[Badger]

August 19, 2003
Islamic headgear is not essential[/url]
By Amir Taheri

France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just appointed a committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist hijab (headgear) in state-owned establishments, including schools and hospitals. The decision has drawn fire from the French "church" of Islam, an organisation created by Raffarin's government last spring.

Germany is facing its hijab problem with a number of Islamist organisations suing federal and state authorities for "religious discrimination" because of bans imposed on the controversial headgear.

In the United States several Muslim women are suing airport security firms for having violated their first amendment rights by asking them to take off their hijab during routine searches of passengers.

All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam.

That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.  

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shiite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shiite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that "scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane" (sic). To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.

By the mid-1980s a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.

Some younger Muslims women, especially Western converts, were duped into believing that the neo-hijab was an essential part of the faith. (Katherine Bullock, a Canadian, so loved the idea of covering her hair that she converted to Islam while studying the hijab.)

The garb is designed to promote gender Apartheid. It covers the woman's ears so that she does not hear things properly. Styled like a hood, it prevents the woman from having full vision of her surroundings. It also underlines the concept of woman as object, all wrapped up and marked out.

Muslim women, like women in all societies, had covered their head with a variety of gears over the centuries. These had such names as lachak, chador, rusari, rubandeh, chaqchur, maqne'a, and picheh among others.

All had tribal, ethnic and generally folkloric origins and were never associated with religion. (In Senegal, Muslim women wear a colourful headgear against the sun, while working in the fields, but go topless.)

Muslim women could easily check the fraudulent nature of the neo-Islamist hijab by leafing through their family albums. They will not find the picture of a single female ancestor of theirs who wore the cursed headgear now marketed as an absolute "must" of Islam.

This fake Islamic hijab is nothing but a political prop, a weapon of visual terrorism. It is the symbol of a totalitarian ideology inspired more by Nazism and Communism than by Islam. It is as symbolic of Islam as the Mao uniform was of Chinese civilisation. It is used as a means of exerting pressure on Muslim women who do not wear it because they do not share the sick ideology behind it. It is a sign of support for extremists who wish to impose their creed, first on Muslims, and then on the entire world through psychological pressure, violence, terror, and, ultimately, war. The tragedy is that many of those who wear it are not aware of its implications. They do so because they have been brainwashed into believing that a woman cannot be a "good Muslim" without covering her head with the Sadr-designed hijab.

Even today, less than one per cent of Muslim women wear the hijab that has bewitched some Western liberals as a symbol of multicultural diversity.

The hijab debate in Europe and the US comes at a time that the controversial headgear is seriously questioned in Iran, the only country to impose it by law.

Last year the Islamist regime authorised a number of girl colleges in Tehran to allow students to discard the hijab while inside school buildings.  The experiment was launched after a government study identified the hijab as the cause of "widespread depression and falling academic standards" and even suicide among teen-age girls.

The Ministry of Education in Tehran has just announced that the experiment will be extended to other girls schools next month when the new academic year begins.  Schools where the hijab was discarded have shown "real improvements" in academic standards reflected in a 30 per cent rise in the number of students obtaining the highest grades.

Meanwhile, several woman members of the Iranian Islamic Majlis (parliament) are preparing a draft to raise the legal age for wearing the hijab from six to 12, thus sparing millions of children the trauma of having their heads covered.

Another sign that the Islamic Republic may be softening its position on hijab is a recent decision to allow the employees of state-owned companies outside Iran to discard the hijab. (The new rule has enabled hundreds of women, working for Iran-owned companies in Paris, London, and other European capitals, for example, to go to work without the cursed hijab.)

The delicious irony of militant Islamists asking "Zionist-Crusader" courts in France, Germany and the United States to decide what is "Islamic" and what is not, will not be missed. The judges and the juries who will be asked to decide the cases should know that hey are dealing not with Islam, which is a religious faith, but with Islamism, which is a political doctrine.
The hijab-wearing militants have a right to promote their political ideology. But they have no right to speak in the name of Islam.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian journalist and author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam.  He can be reached through http://www.benadorassociates.com.

[straffo]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Straffo (a different individual from Quiabe) was sayinng he disliked his anthem for being too patriotic. I pointed put that I feel its an important patriotic song in french history that should be respected. And again added that I like the song.

I expressed myself badly again I think , when I wrote "over patriotic" I did mean : trop sanguinaire.

To take your own words : bloodthirsty, xenophobic, revenge filled revolutinary song.

It's more a "chant de guerre" than a anthem IMO

Especially because the last part Is never singed :

Que l'amitié, que la patrie
Fassent l'objet de tous nos vœux
Ayons toujours l'âme nourrie
Des feux qu'ils inspirent tous deux [bis]
Soyons unis, tout est possible,
Nos vils ennemis tomberont
Alors les Français cesseront
De chanter ce refrain terrible :

Aux armes, citoyens
Formez vos bataillons...

[GRUNHERZ]

Great article, thanks Badger!  

Still the French law is wrong to ban religios expression in school and public facilities.

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by straffo
I expressed myself badly again I think , when I wrote "over patriotic" I did mean : trop sanguinaire.

To take your own words : bloodthirsty, xenophobic, revenge filled revolutinary song.

It's more a "chant de guerre" than a anthem IMO

Especially because the last part Is never singed :

Que l'amitié, que la patrie
Fassent l'objet de tous nos vœux
Ayons toujours l'âme nourrie
Des feux qu'ils inspirent tous deux [bis]
Soyons unis, tout est possible,
Nos vils ennemis tomberont
Alors les Français cesseront
De chanter ce refrain terrible :

Aux armes, citoyens
Formez vos bataillons...

Of course its a war song, it was the song of your revolution.  Still I feel it signifies France and a vital part of your history.

What better anthemn can you have?

Imagine writing a new one, what would you do? Get together a comitee of experts to custom design a tame new song that offends nobody and ultimately stands for nothing because it is artifical and fake?

[lasersailor184]

What company ?
What violation ?

France and germany were buying oil from Iraq during the sanctions.  They were dealing with Saddam to get oil dirt cheap.  Even at such a low price, billions went to Saddam and his cronies every month.  Not a single penny was spent on the people.