WHEN WILL WE WAKE UP????
November 19, 2011 — PARIS (AP) — French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen unveiled her vision for the country to hundreds of cheering supporters Saturday, advocating again for an exit from the euro and tighter border controls.
During a speech that lasted more than an hour, Le Pen hammered home the traditional promises of her Front National party: strengthening France, preserving family values, fighting immigration and rejecting globalization.
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"French interest before everything, above everything," she told the crowd. But on the economy, she was surprisingly silent, putting off until January her plan for reducing France's debts. Le Pen and the front have always advocated a more isolationist path for France — policies that could gain traction as Europe's debt crisis continues to swallow more countries.
Greece, Portugal and Ireland have already been bailed out, and Italy's fate now hangs in the balance, with its borrowing costs approaching levels generally considered unaffordable. Fears about the future of the euro and the ability of eurozone leaders to dig the continent out of the crisis have also sent France's borrowing costs rising.
Le Pen would only repeat that France should leave the euro before it falls apart, telling BFM TV after her speech that "we have to anticipate this collapse, not suffer it." She said she would outline a "plan for vigor" in January — and said it would provide a sharp contrast to the austerity introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy. The government has been forced to introduce a raft of budget cuts this year as it tries to keep its promise to balance the budget before 2016.
While Sarkozy has said France must help right the eurozone it helped create, Le Pen contends that such integration impinges on France's sovereignty. "None of this will be possible without the authority of a strong state," she said during her speech, which lasted more than hour and was frequently interrupted by applause. "I said strong, not bloated."
Le Pen, who inherited the leadership of the Front National from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, has said she wants to broaden appeal for her party, known for its anti-immigration, anti-Islam views. But she reiterated calls for tighter surveillance of the borders, calling for customs posts to be placed at the frontier. Within the European Union, goods and people now cross most borders without such checks.
Le Pen also presented a raft of ideas on improving political accountability — like limiting French presidents to one seven-year term, instead of the current two five-year terms — and education — like focusing on teaching French and calculus earlier.
Subjects Government and politics People Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean-Marie Le Pen Locations France, Western Europe, Europe Organisations European Union.
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Cisco, this should be painfully obvious to you by now... we are slaves in this system.
You are given few choices for change, and if any of the limited choices shows any independent direction he/she will be out before you can say "Kevin Rid" or "George Papawhati" or "Silvio Berlowhosi".
You can protest all you want. Camp out for weeks. Walk around with a placard. If you're in the system you must pay the bankers usury on invented money, tax on your labour, tax on energy and tax on using that energy. If you're out of the system you're irrelevant, for the time being.
Welcome to serfdom 
Europe in the middle ages, the lords of the land ruled over the people because the people were too damn stupid, ignorant and illiterate to care or do anything about it.
If a peasant could think for himself and approached another peasant saying... why must we work our lords land?
Why does he have the right to this land?
Why are we born in to debt to our lord?
The other peasant would wait for the next tax collector to come by and tell him; that guy's a nutter conspiracy theorist, who's plotting against our lord; in order to carry favour with the rulers.
The lords intentionally kept them dumb, and the news of the day (a travelling news reader) was all about reinforcing the systems objective.
Of course the Peasant's (terrorist of the day) finally revolted (time and again) after they nothing to lose... this is the way it has been for ages.
People trying to dominate over other people... every time the dynamic changes, but the object remains the same.
If people ever forget that there are other people trying to rule them, then they get what's coming to them.
There are insecure people, who want to be told what to do, who don't trust their own mind and who will do anything to preserve the status quo... you will recognise them when the chastise you for any idea that differs from their lord's.
Finally. Wake up People!!!
I for one have had enough of this slave like existence. I was reminded of this just recently when I had to wait at least 10 seconds for my Full HD flat screen TV to turn on so I could watch Seinfeld. Those fat cats are laughing at my pothering existence right now.
Revolution!!!
I personally couldn't care less.
It's not ignorance that makes me feel that way...it's not that I'm oblivious to all that is going on...I just don't care. Because at the end of the day, with the lifestyle I live, it makes not enough difference for me to get bothered by it. The things I hold dear in life are not people, money, property or country. I have no credit cards, no debt, mortgage, I'm not much of a consumer (other than fuel) and I have no political agenda what so ever and I tend not to leave my money in the hands of a bank.
"My grand parents fraught on the Allied's side"
They hired out boats to the Allies? 
"If your objective was to get a cheap laugh, we're laughing at you.".......I hate to break the news to ya FL but...... And have you noticed the continuing theme of your posts, ie. I'm really smart and your really stupid. This of course could well be true(especially in my case)but it does make you sound like a bit of a turkey.
Those Italians must be pretty stupid to allow someone who works /worked for Goldman Sachs to run their country or lead a political party.
Oh hang on 
It seems like representative democracy is coming to an end in Western Europe. I listened to an interesting analysis of the issues facing the EU on ABC Radio National on the weekend.
Basically when they went to monetary union it was expected that Germany would suffer because it had a high wage, high regulation economy. In this situation factories and jobs would flow to lower wage and lower regulation countries such as Portugal and Poland.
However the German government was very clever and they were able to export their labour laws and costs along with the Euro. So suddenly industries in many European countries were uncompetitive because of higher wages and increased regulation. At the same time German products flooded the European markets and Germany became the second biggest exporter in the world.
Now they are using that economic leverage to dominate western Europe. The German government is determined to keep the EU monetary union together. Otherwise their economy is stuffed. This is ironic as its taken about 100 years, two world wars and the deaths of millions of Europeans, for the German government to achieve what it wanted to achieve in 1914.
.
.
YAAAAAAAAWN
Why bitch about it on the internet? Go do something about it if you're so concerned.
Conservatism seems to be spreading.
Leftist govts shown the exit amid European crisis
November 21, 2011 — MADRID (AP) — Throw a dart at a map of Europe now and it takes expert aim to hit a country run by a left-of-center government, especially after Spain's Socialists were emphatically drubbed out of power over the weekend.
Although the shift to the right began years ago in such heavyweights as France and Germany, it is now all but complete three years into the continent's grinding debt and economic crisis. Why? When times get tough — when "the cows get thin" as the Spanish say — political experts say edgy voters seek comfort with conservatives.
"The center-right is the natural preference in times of crisis," said Piotr Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "If you look at societies and how they make their preferences, they all tend to vote more conservative in times of crisis and more center-left in times of economic progress."
Granted, on the European Union map there are scattered spots of leftist liberalism. A new Social Democratic government runs Denmark, there is a center left government in Norway and there is a broad Social Democratic-led coalition in Austria. And the Socialists might beat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election next year.
But Kaczynski said there is no doubt the European left faces an uphill battle in re-establishing itself with an appealing message and the means to enact it, despite widespread disillusionment with go-go capitalism as seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests and Europe's widespread anti-austerity marches.
In Spain, voters enduring a 21.5 jobless rate ejected the Socialists and install the center-right Popular Party by a crushing margin in Sunday's election. Voters dumped the Socialists in Portugal earlier this year and the Labour Party in Britain last year, in both cases shifting to conservative parties. A technocrat government has taken over in the last month from Greece's Socialist prime minister.
Kaczynski said is not an ironclad rule that a government will be dumped from power during an economic crisis. He cited the cases of troubled governments being re-elected in Latvia, Estonia — a member of the eurozone — and Poland, and said as long as the public concludes the government is capable and taking the right approach to a financial crisis, it might get a second chance.
That was not the case for Spain's Socialists, due to the poor record of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in fighting unemployment and in resurrecting an economy that overcome nearly two years of recession in 2010 only to stall again last quarter.
His punishment: the conservative Popular Party won 186 seats in the 350-seat lower chamber of Parliament, up from 154, while the Socialists plummeted from 169 seats to 110, their worst performance ever.
"Clearly, Spain is the biggest loss for the European Socialists. That is absolutely the case," Kaczynski said. In his first public comments, Zapatero — who did not seek a third term — said Monday that the austerity measures he took — and which caused supporters to flee in a stampede — "put the national interests ahead of party interests."
Spanish stock and bond markets shrugged off the Popular Party win because it was so widely expected and because leader Mariano Rajoy has yet to spell out how he will attack Spain's unemployment debacle, deficit and growth woes.
However, some experts say Europe is not going right ideologically but rather seeking something — anything — new to get out of its quagmire. "I wouldn't say Europe is turning to the right. It's basically the crisis is crushing the incumbents," said Eurasia Group's analyst for Europe, Antonio Barroso. "People are disappointed in the bad economic data, high unemployment and basically they are voting for the other alternative."
He noted that in Italy, conservative premier Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign this month as the eurozone crisis centered on his debt-laden country — but that was to a technocratic administration, not to leftist politicians.
Barroso also mentioned the 2012 French presidential race and Sarkozy's record low approval rating. The feisty French conservative is trailing the Socialist Francois Hollande badly in the polls, although he has recovered a bit in recent weeks.
Socialists are strong in local and regional politics in France: They head 24 of France's 26 regional governments and run major cities including Paris, Lyon, and Lille. Most recently, in September, the Socialists wrested control of the Senate, Parliament's upper house, for the first time in more than a half-century — seen by many as a rebuff to Sarkozy.
In Germany, conservative Angela Merkel beat the center-left's Gerhard Schroeder in 2005 after he pushed through labor market reforms and welfare state cuts. The moves angered his leftist supporters but they are credited with bolstering Germany's strength in the current financial crisis.
However, Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities in London agreed it is perhaps natural for people to turn to the right in times of extreme financial hardship. He noted it happened in the 1930s during the Depression.
"It is not surprising that we are seeing all these right-wing governments appear as a result of elections or imposed from Brussels," Lewis said.
Im not homeless, but Ill take some of that soup, mmmm, best comment yet
All this talk of soup, I'm feeling a little flushed
So don't be pulling my chain
