Posts Tagged ‘France’
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
3/3/10
A pay telephone line for French Catholics to confess their sins has drawn criticism from bishops. ”For advice on confessing, press one. To confess, press two. To listen to some confessions, press three,” says a soothing male voice, welcoming the caller to ”Le Fil du Seigneur”, or ”The Line of the Lord” service. However: ”In the case of serious or mortal sins, that is, sins that have cut you off from Christ our Lord, it is indispensable to confide in a priest,” warns the service. The service has been criticised by the Conference of French Bishops – an assembly of senior clerics – which has warned that the line had ”no approval from the Catholic Church in France”. It was set up this month to mark the beginning of the fasting period of Lent by a group of Catholics working for AABAS, a small Paris company that provides telephone messaging services, said its creator, Camille. (She asked that her second name not be used because she had received threats.)
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Tags: Christianity, France
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
4/2/10
Having lived for several years in a veiled society, I feel the most important questions have not been asked (Letters, February 3).Why do women wear the veil? Where in the Koran does it say women must cover themselves from head to toe? If it doesn’t stipulate that, why do they continue to do so? My experience of living in the Gulf was that if they did not, they would be ostracised from their families, community and culture. As the honour of the Muslim family was based on the virginity or sexual purity of its female members, to do otherwise would bring everlasting shame. The veil took from the woman the ability to be recognised, or to have a specific identity, and left her as a faceless, nameless, cloaked black figure. And in covering the woman’s face and form, men were exonerated from accepting responsibility for their carnal desires.
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Tags: Australia, France, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Sally Neighbour; 1/2/10
Like the Americans waging war in Afghanistan, the French demanding their government ban the burka would do well to look back in history at the experience of others who pursued a similar path. In 1935, the shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, embarked on a sweeping program of modernisation. He built railways, factories and a university and prohibited the photographing of camels, which he believed made Iran look backwards. He also outlawed the chador, urging his countrywomen to “cast their veils, this symbol of injustice and shame, into the fires of oblivion”. The move was “part of a continuous Westernisation campaign whose primary aim was to weaken Islam”, Iranian historian and author Mohammad Gholi Majd wrote. Women who resisted had their veils forcibly removed and troops killed hundreds of protesters at mosques.
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Tags: Australia, France, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Religion | No Comments »
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
24/12/09
The French parliament has passed a law to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific, a response to decades of complaints by people sickened by radiation. The law cleared the French Senate on Tuesday, its final legislative hurdle following approval in the National Assembly in June. France ”can at last close a chapter of its history”, the Defence Minister, Herve Morin, said. He called the law ”just, rigorous and balanced”. However, some victims’ groups in the South Pacific said the law did not go far enough. Radio New Zealand reported that there were protest marches across several islands in French Polynesia this week. Churches and political parties said the law was inadequate as it was too restrictive.
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Tags: Arms, France, Pacific
Posted in Arms, Environment, Human Rights, Pacific Region | No Comments »
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
14/11/09
Nicolas Sarkozy has decreed there’s no place in France for full-face and body veils such as the burka. Speaking yesterday during a speech on national identity, the French President said: “France is a country where there is no place for the burka.” Mr Sarkozy said all beliefs would be respected but “becoming French means adhering to a form of civilisation, to values, to morals”. France has a large Muslim community, but only a small minority of French Muslim women wear burkas or other face-covering veils. Mr Sarkozy said in June that burkas would not be welcome in France. Since then, a parliamentary panel has examined the possibility of a ban on them being worn in public.
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Tags: France, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
10/11/09
France fears that Israel no longer wants a Middle East peace deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, and that Paris remains deeply opposed to Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. Later, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has said he does not want to run for reelection in January. The two leaders spoke on the phone ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Paris on Wednesday. While Sarkozy encouraged Abbas to pursue Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift breakthrough in the negotiations.
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Tags: France, Israel, Settlers, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
27/10/09
A French court convicted the Church of Scientology and one of its leaders of fraud today, but stopped short of banning the group’s activities in France. The Celebrity Centre and a book shop – the two branches of Scientology’s French operations – were ordered to pay a E600,000 ($974,026) fine for preying financially on vulnerable followers. Scientology’s leader in France Alain Rosenberg was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined E30,000 ($48,701) on the same charge. A lawyer for Scientology’s French operations said he would appeal.
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Tags: Cult, France, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Religion, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Linda S. Heard; 30/6/09
The burqa worn by Muslim women is “a sign of subjugation” that is not “welcome” in his country, says French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Communist Party Member of Parliament Andre Gerin goes a step further. He likens it to a degrading “prison”. But the movement to ban the burqa and the niqab is described by a spokesperson for the French Council for the Muslim Religion as a way of stigmatising Islam and the Muslims of France. France’s parliament is currently split on the issue, with those against a proposed law that would make wearing the burqa illegal warning this could incite France’s five million Muslims.
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Tags: France, Muslim, Women
Posted in Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Adam Sage, 26/6/09
L’oreal, the French cosmetics giant, whose advertising campaigns proclaim “because you’re worth it”, was found guilty of racial discrimination for considering black, Arab and Asian women unworthy of selling its shampoo. France’s highest court was told that the group had sought an all-white team of sales staff to promote Fructis Style, a haircare product made by Garnier, L’Oreal’s beauty division. The word went out that Garnier’s hostesses should be BBR – “bleu, blanc, rouge” – the colours of the French flag. The expression is widely recognised in the French recruitment world as a code for white French people born to white French parents, a court was told – in effect excluding the four million or so members of ethnic minorities in France. La Cour de Cassation, the equivalent of the US Supreme Court, said the policy was illegal under French employment law, upholding a ruling given by the Paris Appeal Court in 2007.
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Tags: France, Racism, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Racism | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
25/6/09
It’s a tragedy that Australia cannot unearth a man with the courage of Nicolas Sarkozy. There are five million or more Muslims in France, but he was still front-and-centre in pointing out the anti-human and anti-democratic coercion, always threatening and sometimes violent, from Muslim men to force women to wear burkas and, more importantly, act accordingly. Instead of Sarkozy, we get political bimbos such as Natasha Stott Despoja wearing the hijab, cowering before Muslim and feminist opinion. Hillary Clinton has too, but she was cowering before Barack Obama’s doomed appeasement policy towards Islam. Christopher Smith; Braddon, ACT
- Has anyone ever thought to ask the burka-wearing women what they think? Having worked in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, I can say safely that the answer may surprise. Modesty and keeping one’s feminine features only for the eyes of one’s husband and family are very important matters for many Muslim women. Our lack of appreciation of these values and our quickness to be critical can paint us as rather naive. Kevin King; Glenelg, SA
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Tags: Australia, Burqa, France, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Abraham Rabinovich; 25/6/09; (3 Items)
Washington kept up its unrelenting pressure on Israel over construction activities in West Bank settlements by calling off a scheduled meeting today between a senior American envoy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The Americans were saying, in effect: ‘When you finish your homework on ending construction, call us,’ said an Israeli official quoted by the daily Yediot Achronot. “Until then, there’s no point to the meeting.” Mr Netanyahu was to have met today in Paris with Washington’s special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, the point man in efforts to hammer out an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. In order to establish his credentials in the Arab world as a fair arbiter, and not simply a patron of Israel, US President Barack Obama has been insistent on Israel completely halting construction in settlements.
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Tags: France, Israel, Settlers, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
Lizzy Davies; 21/6/09
France’s ability to reconcile secularism with religious diversity is under fresh scrutiny after the Government said it would not rule out banning women from wearing the full Islamic veil, the burqa. Five years after a law was passed forbidding children from wearing the headscarf or any other “conspicuous” religious symbol in schools, the Government indicated it was prepared for another thorny row over the state’s right to tell individuals what not to wear. Speaking a day after a group of MPs requested an inquiry into the “degrading” use of the burqa and niqab, Government spokesman Luc Chatel said it was important to establish to what extent women’s rights were being compromised.
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Tags: France, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Womens Rights | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
16/6/09
A French prosecutor has recommended a Paris court should dissolve the Church of Scientology’s French branch when it rules on charges of fraud against the organisation. Registered as a religion in the United States, with celebrity members such as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, Scientology enjoys no such legal protection in France, where it has faced repeated accusations of being a money-making cult. The Church’s Paris headquarters and bookshop are defendants in a fraud trial that began on May 25. Summing up her views on the case, state prosecutor Maud Coujard urged the court to return a guilty verdict and dissolve the organisation in France.
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Tags: France, Sect
Posted in Aid / Trade, Religion | No Comments »
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
23/5/09
France accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday of prejudicing the outcome of the Middle East peace process by declaring that Jerusalem would forever be Israel’s undivided capital. “The declaration made by the Israeli prime minister yesterday in Jerusalem prejudices the final status agreement,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux told reporters in Paris. The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the city’s status is a stumbling block in negotiations with Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state. On Thursday, at a ceremony marking Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Netanyahu said: “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It has always been, will remain so forever and will never be divided.” (more…)
Tags: France, Israel, Terrorism
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Paul Maley; 7/4/09; (3 Items)
Border protection authorities have intercepted a boatload of 63 unauthorised arrivals, bringing to 187 the number of boatpeople detained this year. The interception by Customs, 31 nautical miles southwest of Ashmore Island, took place last Thursday – a day after authorities were forced to assist a second boatload of 50 illegal immigrants whose boat had run aground in the Torres Strait. The latest boatloads mean the number of unauthorised passengers to arrive this year has exceeded the total of 179 for the whole of last year. The increase in the number of boatpeople comes after the Rudd Government last year softened Australia’s treatment of unauthorised arrivals, shutting down the so-called “Pacific Solution” of offshore processing centres and abolishing temporary protection visas.
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Tags: Australia, France, Refugees & Migrants
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
26/5/09
France is to compensate victims of nuclear testing carried out in French Polynesia and Algeria, after decades of denying its responsibility. An initial sum of E10 million ($19.3 million) has been set aside for military and civilian staff, as well as local populations who fell ill from radiation exposure, Defence Minister Herve Morin said. About 150,000 civilian and military personnel took part in 210 nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara desert and the Pacific between 1960 and 1996. “It’s time for France to be true to its conscience,” Mr Morin said. The move was welcomed by French veterans, who have waged a long campaign for the state to recognise its responsibility towards ageing and sick staff of its nuclear program.
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Tags: Arms, Environment, France, Pacific
Posted in Arms, Environment, Human Rights, Pacific Region | No Comments »
