Why The GOP -- remember "Freedom Fries"? -- Now Loves France ...
1. France’s Le Pen Says Torture Can Be ‘Useful’ to Fight Terrorism
The leader of France’s anti-immigrant, anti-European Union National Front, Marine Le Pen, said that torture can be sometimes “useful” to fight terrorism, in response the U.S. Senate report on the CIA.
“There can be cases -- when there is a bomb ticking, that can explode in an hour or two and kill 200 or 300 civilians -- where it can be useful to have to make someone talk with the means available,” Le Pen told RMC radio and BFM Television today.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-10/france-s-le-pen-says-torture-can-be-useful-to-fight-terrorism.html
2. Marine Le Pen: Muslims in France 'like Nazi occupation'
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far-Right, drew heavy criticism after she said Muslims praying outside were like Nazi occupiers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8197895/Marine-Le-Pen-Muslims-in-France-like-Nazi-occupation.html
3. The Attack on Charlie Hebdo Plays Right Into Marine Le Pen's Hands
An additional dimension to this tragedy (attack on Charlie Hebdo) is that it plays directly into the hands of those public figures and politicians who would like to see France regress into an organic national community of blood ties, rather than of citizens. The Islamic extremists who executed the attack on Charlie Hebdo may have murdered journalists and artists, but surely their crime is also against other Muslims in France, who are now likely to be viewed as enemy aliens hostile to the essence of the Republic itself, regardless of their own beliefs. Michel Houellebecq, for instance, who often paints Muslims as a dangerous fifth column, might now perhaps be vindicated in the eyes of unreflective readers; and, in the words of one Lebanese blogger, today might very well be the day that Marine Le Pen became President of France. Le Pen, by the way, has compared the Muslim presence in France to the German occupation of the 1940s. After today, we can only hope that others will not start doing the same.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120712/charlie-hebdo-attacks-religious-violence-europe
= new reply since forum marked as read
by DU members asking why conservatives in our country all of a sudden are embracing the French after years of bashing them for having questioned Bush's claims about WMD and opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
if Marine Le Pen wins the next French presidential election
much like ...
and she could become France's next president ... it would be like Ted Cruz becoming president of the United States
(And the Tea Party in this country is falling in love with her, the way they did with Putin.)
Pierre Bienaimé
Jan. 9, 2015
France's rising right-wing National Front party thinks it might stand to gain in popularity after the armed attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and continuing hostage crises that have killed more than a dozen people in and around Paris since Wednesday.
Earlier today Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder and onetime face of the party, tweeted a black-and-white photo of his daughter, presumed 2017 presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen, with the words "Keep Calm and Vote Le Pen."
The messaging suggests that putting the National Front in power would help address what the party believes to be the root cause of the attacks: Muslim immigration to France. In a statement following the attacks, Marine Le Pen herself was less direct, though she spoke of a "war" that extremists had declared on the country.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/frances-right-wing-national-front-is-positioning-itself-to-take-advantage-of-this-weeks-attacks-2015-1
a scenario played out.
