Listing Details
| ID: | 2055 |
| Title: | No Pasaran |
| URL: | http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/ |
| Category: | Regional: Europe |
| Description: | French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions from an insider's perspective. |
| At Its 1963 Launching, France's Radio and TV Station Was Described Incontrovertibly by Charles De Gaulle as "a Propaganda Instrument" - 2012-02-07 14:39:00 |
 Besides the firing of radio and TV reporters who did not please the powers-that-be, censorship and self-censorship were the rule in France's radio and television stations, while "taboo" subjects were avoided.Needless to say, sentences like this one inDaniel Psenny'sLe Mondebook review help explainthe widespread opposition in Franceto George W. Bush during the Iraq War coupled with just-as-widespread support for Jacques Chirac's "peace camp" histrionics. The book itself thatPsennyis reviewing —Augustin Scalbert'sLa Voix de son maître ?France Inter et le pouvoir politique, 1963-2012— goes into more specifics, and that from the very beginning: In his speech launching the official French radio and TV station almost 50 years ago,Charles de Gaullehad no compunction about stating incontrovertibly that the Radiodiffusion-télévision française (including France Inter) should be "a propaganda instrument", writesDaniel Psenny. (As forLe Mondeitself, it turns out thatFrance's newspaper of referencewasborn under similar circumstancesandwith similar goals…) Inaugurée le 14 décembre 1963 par le général de Gaulle, la Maison de la radio, qui abrite les radios de service public (dont France Inter), a longtemps été considérée comme"la voix de la France". Dans son discours inaugural, le Général n'avait d'ailleurs pas hésité àaffirmerque la Radiodiffusion-télévision française (la RTF) de l'époque avait"une responsabilité nationale"et devaitêtreclairement un instrument de propagande.   |
| You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave - 2012-02-07 13:50:00 |
With no exit mechanism, and no substantive federalism, or a unifying idea, Francis Fukuyama decribes why the EU empire-building project is more or less like theHotel Californiain a sense, there is a deeper failure at the European level, a failure in European identity. That is to say, there was never a successful attempt to create a European sense of identity and a European sense of citizenship that would define the obligations, responsibilities, duties and rights that Europeans have to one another beyond simply the wording of the different treaties that were signed. The EU in many respects was created as a technocratic exercise done for purposes of economic efficiency. What we can see now is that economic and post-national values are not enough to get people to buy into this community. So wealthy Germans feel a sense of noblesse oblige towards poorer Germans; this social solidarity is the basis of the German welfare state. But they do not feel similar obligations towards the Greeks,whom they regard as being poor disciplined, very non-German in their general approach to fiscal matters.  |
| Unbearable Heat Wave: Global Warming Hits Europe Like a Winter Storm - 2012-02-06 19:20:00 |
 Plantucartoon: •If I had a job in a newspaper, I could also break important news stories! • Newspaper headlines: — Snow Is Falling! — It's Freezing! — Snow Is Falling! — It'sFreezing! MoreGlobal Warming newshere…  |
