Why Watch France?

The purpose of this website (blog) is simple and three-fold:

1) To aggregate all available information about French terror, exploitation and manipulation of Africa
2) To expose France, which has so far done an excellent job of being a thug at night and an enlightened sophisticate during the day
3) To explore and to implement non-violent strategies for weakening and terminating the French Empire in Africa

1) Why watch France?
Of all the former European colonial powers (UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany), France remains the only remaining de facto colonial power of great significance in Africa. The consequences of that policy have been tragic and inimical to development and freedom in Africa.

France is an important icon to many in the West and around the world. It has with some success painted itself as a beacon of freedom, high European culture and fashion around the world, so many people have a hard time juxtaposing those beautiful images with those of the immoral, brutal, rapacious empire about which they are learning for the first time. With rare exceptions, the sources and links that paint this more complete picture of France are not created by us. They are independent. At this point, we confine ourselves mostly to commentary, from the perspective of the victim. If you may, google french wine, and you will get over 4 million hits, relating to that single soporific French cultural reference. That is just a small sliver of the huge propaganda machine.

2) Who Are We?
There are at this time, four writers and commentators on Francewatcher. They are all Africans on exile from the Bastille States of Africa.

3) How do I contact the editor of Francewatcher?
Address an email to:
cohibabob2000@yahoo.com

4)Why do you not write in French?
The short answer: our target audience is not primarily France, but the rest of the world. Now the long answer: French is a great language, but writing in French is like writing in a ghetto, a ghetto controlled and ignored by French power. There are numerous publications, authors and pressure groups, notably Survie and the heroic French lawyer, Verschave who have written extensively and protested ceaselessly about French policy and crimes in Africa. They have been marginalized and ignored for the most part. Now the rest of the world and a wider audience needs to learn about these crimes: in English, the most widely spoken language in our age.
.

5) Why France; why not other serious issues that confront Africa?
That is an important question. One of the lessons of our education is that in general, specialization is good for efficiency and effectiveness. There are other important problems like the AIDS pandemic and others directly attributable to Africans themselves, and others have specialized in those particular things. We have identified French policy as one of the most important stumbling blocks to intra-African cooperation and unity; we have identified France as the most important enemy of the pan-African project, more enduring and more important than apartheid South Africa used to be.

6)Are you anti-France or francophobic?
Not any more than the French were anti-German when they were occupied by the Germans or the Gauls must have been anti-Roman when they were occupied by the Romans. This is an accusation that usually comes from those who had a very high impression about France and are completely shocked by the revelation of France as terrorist state. Africans are quite forgiving of past wrongs. German, British, Portuguese and Belgian brutalities in Africa are not hot burning issues, because they are not ongoing. French neocolonialism is ongoing and continues to have serious consequences, including genocide and civil wars, naked exploitation and environmental devastation. We are not feeling warm and fuzzy about France at this time, but the moment they pack their instruments of torture and control into their Citroens and leave, they will be off our minds.

8) Are ordinary French people responsible?
To the extent that France is a democracy and the people do not make the French African Empire and Françafrique an important issue in their politics and keep voting the same criminals to power and sustain the structures at the French Embassy, Ministry of Cooperation, Elf (and other corporations), the secret services and the military that are oppressing our people. There are French people who are documenting and fighting their government on this issue, but they need plenty of help.

9) Are you a part of the War in Iraq?
No! But, France's hypocritical confrontation with the US was an opportunity we could not pass for educating the world. Thank you, Dominique (Monsieur Villepin)!

10) Why do you not go to Africa and fight France from there?
The next phase of the fight for freedom from France must not take place in Africa, but on the streets and presses of Europe and America. French neocolonialism has always counted on the remoteness and its control of its colonies in Africa as a means to escape scrutiny and criticism for the numerous regime changes, civil wars and genocides that it has perpetrated on the continent. No African child or mother's blood should be spilled again. The blood to be spilt in this struggle must be French prestige and its economy.

11) How can I contribute?
We need more writers, graphic artists, cartoonists, fundraisers, community organizers, media specialists, fund raisers, lawyers and other volunteers; and not only Africans, but everybody including French folks. At this point, we attribute external sources, but all our internal writers' contributions are attributed to France Watcher. We are doing this to encourage writers who wish to remain anonymous to contribute.

I wish to write on Francewatcher
Contact the editor at:
cohibabob2000@yahoo.com

Comments

[Jan]

GREAT WEBSITE I am all for it!
Just read a book about Franch support for Hutus who are responsible for genocide in Rwanda.

This website made me concious about the overall image of French Foreign Politics in Africa.
Keep it UP!!
Thanks

p.s.
Right now I'm writting a paper about why France should be voted out from being a permanent member of Security Council

[Non mais franchement]

A fantastic site for hating the frenchs. What wonderful idea! Yeah, Frenchs are bastards and should be killed... Pfff...
Like in USA and in all other country, we, french, are strugglig against our gouvernment and his policy. Should we really make a contest of the most ugly genocide, the most ugly war? Not sure that France will win...
No, we are not pretentious, we are not cowards and we are not all the same. I'm french and i totally recognize the responsability of my country in the sorry state of Africa and i can assure that most of frenchs have the same sentiment. But, like in USA and most of the occidental democracies, we are struggling against an intelligentsia which controls our country by media and disinformation. This is the money who rules the world and France is only a place where there are a lot of money. It seems that the rising hate campaign towards France is only a consequence of disinformation of others persons which would gain money on the back of africans instead French people.

I hope, with all my heart, that, one day, Africans will take their destiny in their own hands and will reject all these bastards ( including french people) who pillage their continent.

But, don't be stupid and stop to say that french are pretentious, hypocrites, thugs etc... because, it's only racism...

[Bob]

To the previous commentator:
No one is advocating tit-for-tat violent crimes against you the French people or for that matter, even the criminals who commit crimes in your name, and use ordinary French people to commit those crimes. When your government and businesses do bad things, it smears all of you. In this case, shame is a good thing. It might cause you to act. Problem is, you are used to Africans scraping and asking favours and wanting approval. That is a survival tactic. Get used to it, because of your government's policies, people do not feel friendly about France in Africa. Not even in Cote d'Ivoire, once thought of as petit France!

When your government went all out in defence of Saddam, Africans were tickled about the hypocrisy. Perhaps Aricans are of no value! Remove the log from your eye before removing the speck of dust from your friend's eye.

[John Moore]

Stop blamihg others -France, the Brits, America, the UN, the pope, Donald Duck- for your failures. Take charge of your countries and start taking RESPONSIBILITY for yourselves. The genocides of the last decades in Africa are propagated by AFRICANS against other AFRICANS. Last time I checked tens of thousands of Africans were trying to enter France to take advantage of the generosity of the French state.

[Erik]

How the hell was France being hypocritical when they opposed the US for the Iraq war? If anything, France was honest because it saw no reason to depose Saddam just because he was a brutal dictator. You want hypocrites? Try the US, who pretend to be all about human rights, but only when it suits their needs. They were perfectly at ease selling Saddam weapons when he was gassing the Kurds in 1988, and did nothing to stop Saddam from butchering thousands of their Shi'ite muslim allies after they withdrew from Iraq in 1991. Where were the cries for human rights and freedoms then? Idiots.
I agree with the previous post. Africans are mostly responsible for their own miseries -- there would have been no genocide to tacitly support if there had been no burning hatred and unevolved, low-life aspirations of Hutus to begin with. And, by the way, Romeo Dallaire places as much blame on the United States as he does on France for what went on in Rwanda. Madelaine Albright knew perfectly well what was going on, yet did much to prevent action from taking place. Again, so much for human rights, huh? Guess what -- in Rwanda, there was no economic incentive for the West to get involved. There's your reality.
Elf is evil in Africa? Yeah, well, Elf didn't hang Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria -- Shell did.
Thank you for showing that this is just yet another mindless anti-French site, not to be taken seriously.

[Bob]

Hypocrisy is encapsulated by the Biblical saying that goes something like this: "take care to remove the log from your eye before pointing out the speck in your brother's eye." Long before there was an Iraq problem, France has been riding rough shod on much of Africa, and continues to do so. We are reminding France to clean itself up before it goes out moralizing. It is an opportunity to be heard. Thank you for reading, although your perspectives are clearly clouded by your own agenda.

Check this out:
http://www.francewatcher.org200407gaullist_africa.html

[Augie]

Dear Eriik,

Thank you for your comments and questions. Let me start a response to you by saying that France is really a country that is more than hypocritical.  It is a fascist state that learned a lot from Nazi Germany and has practiced Nazism in the world unchallenged for two reasons. 1) The US liberated it from Hitler and since then has treated it as a child suffering from post traumatic syndrome, needing sympathy and treatment rather than a good beating like the one Hitler received. 2) the fear of the French going Communist after the Second World War also forced the US to not only look the other way in the crimes against humanity the French have committed especially in Africa but has also forced America to give technology, including nuclear technology, to keep France from loosing it all. You can also add the fact that France is located in Western Europe and because the Brits needed a power to stand between them and a communist invasion, they built up the French to a "super power" status.  It was the Brits who pleaded to the US to give France a permanent seat at the UN security council. 

 

French Nazism is most practiced in Africa where she refused to decolonized when the Brits moved out and the Spanish and Portuguese got beaten out through wars. The French remained to practice slavery on Africans through planting gangster governments in its slave colonies to brutalize and extort from Africans while she remains the dominant power exploiting Africans unchallenged. I can go on and by the time I'm done you'll agree that the hypocrisy of the US and the rest of the world is not in the intervention in Iraq but in tolerating the atrocities the French have been allowed to get away with in Africa. 

 

On the other hand, the US is the most powerful country in the history of the world.  This world dominance did not come until the Second World War and since then the world has never been freer, more prosperous and human kind has never been more protected.  When Europeans ran the world everyone every where crawled to their needs and wants. Africans still under the control of France are still crawling and we are watching France to expose this and rally the world to do to the French in Africa what the world did to Nazi Germany in Europe.  The world has been a better place with America on top. It is because of America that Europe was rebuilt after WW1, Japan rebuilt, South Korea built. Every where Americans have set foot the people have progressed and developed. The only time America has supported or sighted with dictators or repression has been to cure a greater danger or evil like communism or terrorism, both of them greater threats to human civilization on earth.

 

I think I'll like to end here. The other issues you raise, I'm sure you can figure the answers from this big picture answer I gave. For example, ELF was a French state owned front for colonial control, Shell is not a state owned company and therefor does not act on behalf of any government. 

 

[Free Southern Cameroons]

For anyone who doubts the evil role of France in Africa, I strongly recommend them to read this book: L'INAVOUABLE: La France au Rwanda. This book is written by Patrick de Saint-Exupery, writer with Le Figaro magazine. In breath taking details: with names, dates, and official correspondence, it explains how the French government directly provided the training, including teaching the Rwandese army and militias "how to weld a machete," (page 180) in as early as 1991. They provided the "doctrine" and "theory" for the genocide. The French parliamentary commission established that Colonel Gilbert Canovas, who was in charge of the Rwanda project, starting in October 1990 (just under four years prior to the French genocide) set up the genocide machinery as follows (pp 247-248):

-Operational Areas
-Massive Recruitment
-Reduction in time of military training
-Media Offensive

The author Mr. Patrick de Saint-Exupery rightly intepretes these directives, and how it played out during the genocide as follows:

-Operational Areas: roadblocks where Tutsis and moderate Hutus were identified for extermination.
-Massive Recruitment: Popular mobilisation of the Hutu militias and population.
-Reduction in time of military training: Militias.
-Media Offensive: Propaganda or psychological warfare (Remember Radio Milles Collines?)

So now we have the names and methodology of a genocide prepared years in advance by French instructors and their Hutu partners. We can now understand how an inefficient junta regime, could be so efficient in killing 800,000 in 100 days! They were tutored and trained by the best in the world - La Grande France.

This book came out in April of this year, and a figure involved with at least one trip to Rwanda before the genocide was one Dominique de Vellepin, whose boss at the time, one Mr. Paul Dijoud had promised Paul Kagame, that "all his allies and their families will be massacred before they get to Rwanda." One wonders why just around this time Mr. de Vellepin was moved from the high visibility post of Foreign Minister to Minister of the Interior in France, while Dijoud is in Argentina as French Ambassador suffering from Rwanda amnesia.

"Vers la fin de 1992, je suis alle a Kigali avec Dominique de Vellepin." said a high ranking French official (p 288).

BUY AND READ: L'INAVOUABLE: La France au Rwanda by
Patrick de Saint-Exupery

[Bob]

What we have here in this interaction is pretty typical. Africans are stereotypically expected to be miserable, silent victims, never agents of their own fates and destinies. Africans are not to be believed and injustices they suffer are to be ignored, until a good Samaritan Westerner shows up as a knight in shining armour to save the day. We would not be having this absurd argument if an American celebrity such as a movie star were our mouthpiece. The facts are all here, in France Watcher: genocides and wanton exploitation, past and ongoing. Read and learn or close your eyes. It is your choice.

Many who write these pages are idealists who have been on the ground in their countries, tried to make changes, but were chased out by gangster governments fronting for France. Hello, liberal Americans, wake up, France is not your friend. You were having a 'clash of civilizations' with France in the middle of the Cold War. In the minds of those who conduct policy there, that war goes on, and they regard you as more of a threat than the jihadists. During the Cold War, they considered you to be a greater threat than the Soviet Union! We are not inventing that, read!

Does all this mean that French people as people are evil? Definitely not. But, from the African experience, France is an oppressive and exploitative monster.

[Erik]

(sorry for the double post)
Few first world countries have clean hands. Politics ain't pretty, but to pretend that France has a monopoly on serving national interests is the height of hypocrisy. France may be more active in Africa than other first world nations because of her colonial history, but "soft" imperialism in many other parts of the world (from propping up brutal dictators friendly to your economic cause to undermining poor nations' sovereignty by various means through the establishments of sweatshops -- read Naomi Klein's book, No Logo) is the expert domain of the good ol' U.S. of A.
I'm not condoning France's actions in Africa (not all of which are bad), yet at the same time I'm not so selectively biased. Perhaps I'm not the only one here with a "log in my eye".

French Plan to Aid Africa Could Be Sunk By Bush

By Guardian Newspapers, 5/22/2003

President Bush is preparing to bury a radical French plan which would help some of the world's poorest farmers by ending the dumping of subsidised western food in Africa.

A war of words over the plight of the world's poorest continent was brewing last night after European officials accused the US of blocking the ban on export subsidies. In a separate attack, Mr Bush blamed European opposition to GM foods for causing hunger in Africa.

President Chirac had been hoping that next month's Evian summit of the world's eight most powerful countries would be a chance to unite western leaders around a rescue plan for Africa and heal the deep rift between Paris and Washington over the war in Iraq.

But the chances of a transatlantic rapprochement were looking slim this week as public criticism of Europe's aid policies from Mr Bush was accompanied by behind-the-scenes attempts by US officials to remove any reference to America's giant export subsidies for its own farmers from the leaders' discussions.

Mr Bush said opposition in Europe to GM had forced several starving sub-Saharan African countries to refuse American GM food aid.

"European governments should join - not hinder - the great cause of ending hunger in Africa," he told the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut on Wednesday night.

Last week Washington mounted a legal challenge at the World Trade Organisation to Europe's moratorium on GM food imports.

Mr Bush said he would be using the Evian summit to urge EU governments to cut the $4bn a year they spend subsidising farm exports. But the White House is vehemently opposed to any discussion at the G8 of cuts to its own export-support programmes, which campaigners estimate total $3.5bn-4bn.

Aid agencies are pressing Tony Blair to use his "special relationship" with Mr Bush to persuade Washington to back the Chirac plan, which would help put a floor under commodity prices on which most African economies rely.

Campaigners were highly critical of the G8 last year for its failure to deliver a blueprint for African reconstruction, despite raising expectations ahead of the summit.

France now fears that the fall-out from the war against Saddam will poison this year's event and make even a repeat of the modest scale of help offered last year in Canada unlikely.

"American opposition to this plan is so strong, they will be negotiating over it right up until the wire," said one G8 official. "We might end up with nothing."

Washington's counter-proposal is believed to be a vast expansion of its subsidised food aid programme, allowing it to pump even more money into American farms under the guise of aid.

Aid agencies say that while European subsidies are more transparent, America's support for its farmers is equally damaging to poor countries which cannot compete with highly subsidised imports.

America's 25,000 cotton farmers collected $4bn from Washington last year, allowing them to sell their goods abroad at half the cost of production, at the expense of far more efficient producers in West Africa. Without government support most American cotton farms would go out of business, but Oxfam estimates they cost West Africa $200m a year in lost exports.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited

Printable version: French Plan to Aid Africa Could Be Sunk By Bush
Send it to a friend | Free "Nation and World" Ezine

[uhuru]

The "not all the French are..." is not an argument that relevant here. Rather than exonerating themselves, the French citizens who are genuinely interested in things improving in Africa should question the government that uses their money and military power to exploit African nations in their name. The issue of innocence or guilt is a purely personal matter. Individuals such as those who have put up this website have done a commendable job of putting the information out there, and yet Africa still remains scarcely discussed publicly in the French political arena. Natuarally there are Africans at home and abroad who are holding their own governments responsible for their misrule; the problem is that often when the people try to improve things, the French step in to assert their control. And that is what this website is about.

[aim]

I want to thank you so much for the wonderful work you are doing to put the French where they belong;France,not Africa.Please keep up and be rest assured that i will do anything i can to help.Maybe we have to first of all start by electing heads of states who will be answerable to their countrymen, not Paris.

[Narayan]

I was saddened by reports here.I know it is true.One of us was in Yaonde, Cameroon selling some stuff and he was stunned by the colonial mentality.
Wish you luck.Hope you guys manage to send packing these evil companies Elf, Shell etc take control of your resources,have your own currency and common market, and EDUCATE EVERY CHILD.I know it is difficult-THEY WILL ALWAYS TRY TO DIVIDE AND RULE YOU.But probably you should get help from the Vietnamese-they have thrown both the French and the Yankees out. Or probably have a nonviolent Indian way-please use your brains.Hope God blesses Africa potentially a very rich continent raped by the oolonialists.

[Francis]

Who pays for this site? Waht a silly, silly enterprise...

[Dave L]

What a nest of vipers:)

You are all as bad as each other with sweeping ideological statements applied to nations, peoples, countries - not much has changed since 1900 apparently. Postcolonial theory tries to address this 'looking down on the world like a board game' attitude, and consider the lives of real people, living real lives. So how are you all today? What's the weather like? Ca va bien? Il fait beaux? J'espere...

Smile:)

Dave L

[Bob C]

Dear Dave L:
You are barking up the wrong tree. We are the victims of Paris playing us like a chessboard and not the other way round, as you seem to think. You should be making your speech to chessmaster Chirac and the other Francafrique criminals who have no regard for the lives of Africans.

A year ago, when we made the decision to expose France's hypocrisies and crimes in Africa, we were discouraged by some of our more fatalistic friends and compatriots who warned us that Europeans always tend up to gang up with other Europeans when Africans are concerned. We refused to believe that, nor to care, because the truth must be spoken, or as in this case, written. If the truth offends you or other Europeans, tough.

Please, excuse us, if we are extremely skeptical when matters of France in Africa are concerned. Without fear of contradiction, I can state that France acts with extreme self-interest pushing its weight around in Europe. Multiply that a thousand times in Africa. For some reason, you guys get very uncomfortable when an African is upset or outraged; even when that outrage is justified. You should not be making speeches at us without holding France to account. Are you mere Eurocowards?

The difference between the crimes committed by other Europeans and those committed by France, is that French crimes are blatantly ongoing. Although the Germans committed acts of genocide against the Herero, the Bakweri and other African nations, these acts are not ongoing, so you might never see a site so intensely focused on German crimes or even Belgian or Portuguese crimes. Contributors to this site are exiled around the world, mostly because of the agency of France, and have a real fear of French-instigated genocide visiting their families and friends.

Would you Europeans be supporting France if:

1) France exploded four or five atomic bombs in the Alps, and the cancer-causing isotopes got carried by the winds into your countries? France did that in Africa, during the 1960s and has never taken any responsibility, just some chest beating. Does the rampant cancer in my family have any relationship to this? I really don't know, and why should you care? You only want to protect your friend's dirty reputation.

2) If France wiped out the entire Luxemburg, or Belgium or some other small European country in an orgy of massacres, napalm, torture, bombings, decapitation, dropping of people down gorges and waterfalls etc, would you want some kind of accounting? If it is the Bamilekes in Cameroon, I guess it is OK to kill 300-400,000 people and not be held to account. These crimes have continued into the late 1990s, and I could go on... I could name names: deGaulle, Foccart, Chirac etcetera.

We have studied the patterns, the way the French operate, training militias similar to the Umtarahamwe in Rwanda in Congo and Cameroon and we are genuinely concerned that France will commit genocide again in our day. That is what this website is about. Do we get angry sometimes? Yes. Obsessed? Perhaps. Crazy? No. It is very easy to sit in your living rooms and make excuses. Read, learn, and do not believe everything you have been told. Europeanette, are you humble enough to learn something from a mere African?

An English saying goes: "give a dog a bad name, and then kill it". That is what France is attempting to do with Gbagbo, since it is so much more difficult to commit outright genocide today. Too many eyes watching.

Bob

[Darryl Flasphaler]

Read through these articles and was amazed to see that international non-governmental agencies(corporations) weren't mentioned too much.

Doesn't matter where - we ARE all the same - voting for and sanctifying politicians who are nothing more than corporate lackeys.

And we - I mean those of us who can and actually DO vote - allow these corporations to not only mandate government policy, but to also dictate the future of this planet.

It's all about the money - always has been and always will be.

Does anyone out there really believe that in the last 300 years there has been a major world-wide or regional conflict NOT heavily influenced by an existing military-industrial complex?

If you do belive so, you need to quit smoking or snorting whatver it is you're doing - and send some to me - so I can quit grinding my teeth all of the time.

Ha.

DJF

[Lola]

Interesting site, I've always wondered why it is mostly african french colonies that have the most wars, coup-de-etats,genocides, lowest mortality,literacy rates in africa.
I could'nt pinpoint at anything since most literature and news about these states is in french anyway.
Your site sheds some light. Keep it up!

P/s maybe you could put the most recent comments at the top not down.

[KIKI]

What's going on in Togo?

Who is supporting this young dictator?

Do you guys have more information?

[John]

I am a Cameronian living in a European country.My greatest gratitude to the intelligent and daring minds who are defying the terrorists(the French)to set up such an informative site.
It so happened that there are some French people who pretend they are not aware of their government's attrocities.I was once engrafted in a French company where I worked for quite a while.
It's shocking to reveal the colloquial and colonial mentality still possessed by these layed-back people.
The rest of the world should understand that joining forces with France to plunder Africa's wealth is gong to boomerang and they will share in the wrath of this recompensation.
Keep up the voice.Make it louder still!!!!!!!

[Mike]

Is there any "USA Watcher" site? Its size could easily be a tenfold of this one (even if it would focus on Africa only)!

[Lucien]

Ce site fait trop pitié...
L'Afrique ira beaucoup mieux quand elle comprendra qu'elle est elle-même la première responsable de ses malheurs.
Même l'esclavage : la plupart des Africains ont oublié que c'étaient eux-mêmes qui vendaient leurs frères aux Blancs. Les Africains se sont aussi enrichis grâce à l'esclavage, une réalité qu'ils ont oublié. Honte à l'Afrique pour être aussi aveugle.
Quant à tous les génocides, c'est avant tout des Africains qui massacrent d'autres Africains. A ce que je sache, c'est pas la France qui a vendu des machettes aux Hutus, et encore moins elle qui leur a appris à s'en servir.

Mais évidemment il est généralement beaucoup plus facile de se dire que tous nos malheurs viennent des autres. Les Blancs, l'Europe, la France, les USA, etc... etc...
Ouais c'est facile, mais pas très pertinent ou productif.

[cyndy]

TO JOHN MOORE

You just mentioned the fact that "perhaps Africans are of no value".so if something is of no value,its better to render it extinct right?well its rather unfortunate that after all the things Africans have suffered in the hands of colonial masters and are still suffering from their hands,some people just stay back in their homes and say"let the African masses take control of their country"its not that easy.if it were just "us"without any foreign intervention especially from France,that would be easier to kick out some figure -headed ruler.Whatever the case,i know it is coming especially in our beloved Cameroon.I see rough times for many people(those who are guilty would know themselves).One of the major reasons i say this is because of the strike that took place in all six state universities in Cameroon,with that of the University of Buea degenerating so badly,to a point where two innocent students,not part of the strike,lost their lives.Bullets from the police caught them unaware.Where in Africa did people learn to curb strikes with bullets?This is French mentality with this acake idea of"guilty until proven innocent".The time is coming when not even the deeply rooted French would want to stay in Cameroon.France should remember that the era of colonisation is now past and and so they should stop that attitude of trying to have a grip of all their former colonies.GOD BLESS CAMEROON AND AFRICA, THE PLACE TO BE.

[Darryl Flasphaler]

Why in MY NAME has this shit been posted? I am surprised - to say the least. How and why is my question. Some idiot out there not ready to claim his own opinions? And idiotic ones at that.

You all are doing what we did after our civil war - a friggin bloody one at that.
CAPITALISM is the gorilla in the corner that everyone is ignoring. CAN IT BE CONTROLLED is the question. History is done.

It's the future that we should be preparing for.

[Flash]

WTF? CAPITALISM is the friggin problem - especially when it transcends international boundaries. Christ is still here for a reason - CAPITALSIM is not the answer to solving human misery. It is the anti-christ
disguised as the savior of the human race - more pointedly - it's impossible to suffice the 'corporate greed' that is rampant in this world. The Bible is a book of fables, a little better maybe than Aesop's. But that is all that it is.

In this day and age, to hear countries calling upon fables as a justification to wage war is an insult to the true potential of capitalism.

Capitalism is a weapon. We developed countries should simply focus on that - and leave all else alone. Economic warfare is what is OK. Anything else - in this day and age? Are you kidding? Is fucking insanity.

The nature of the beast will undo itself - meaning that, with grace and humility, we can all start understanding that DEATH comes to us all. And wasting additional money mounting up youthful armies to 'kill the enemy' - in the name of corporate greed - is really, really, really stupid.

CAPITAL, LIFE, LOVE, SEX, etc, transient things - death - uh, permanent, no? Why aren't we all fighting about ways to make each human life on this planet more meaningful? And equitable? Why? At the end of our species - and it will come someday - will we look back upon our history and be satisfied that we really tried as hard as we could to take care of each other?

No. Not from what I've seen. And read about.
We are dooming ourselves to our own destruction. Every infant that dies of starvation - she or he might have had 4 or 5 times the intellect of our generations' cherished 'Einstein'.

There is enough - more than enough - to 'go around' - we all know it, but really do nothing to make a difference. Better to drink the glass of wine, beer, whiskey and just pretend that our children will be able or willing to make things right.

That's really what we all 'developed' people do.

What a joke. I lived a neglected life as a child - physically abused even. But compared to starvation of children worldwide? I lived in heaven - I know it and everyone else knows it.

So why are we fighting in Iraq? To save the children of the world? Seriously - to save the population from themselves? The Brits couldn't do it with us - how can we do it with ......oh, wait, that's right. We could just simply firebomb all of the civilians and then nuke 'military targets of interest'.

I be rambling. Bad mouth the French government? For disagreeing with AMERICA? We should follow their lead as far as I'm concerned.

We've basically colonized the entire planet for Christ's sake. Time for us to withdraw and tone down our conception of the 'necessities of life'.

Me. DARRYL J. FLASPHALER, LCDR USN