Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Blue, white and red: Sarko slams the mullahs and sides with the United States
The president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, has stepped up:
French President Nicholas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West's demands to cease its nuclear agenda.
If Iran attains nuclear weapons, Sarkozy warned, a road to an arms race will be paved that could endanger Israel and southeast Europe, he said during an interview with a German magazine.
Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.
The official TigerHawk ban on French jokes remains in force until further notice.
7 Comments:
By 
Escort81, at
Wed May 23, 06:58:00 PM:
As Cardinalpark might also say, the French elected a smart Hungarian.
You have to be smart to learn that language -- I recently purchased this Hungarian language course complete with CDs (as a way of honoring my mother, b. Budapest, 1925, emigrated USA 1936, d. Pennsylvania, 1990), and I can't even get my mouth to make the right sounds. I have some exposure to the languange, so I have no excuse.
I wonder how successful Sarkozy will be in changing the culture of the French elites with respect to important foreign policy matters in the Middle East. In a few years, he may be less popular than GWB is among the left in France.
Funny that the interview quote came from a German and not a French magazine, though I suppose one could read too much into that.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed May 23, 08:11:00 PM:
Sure, we can start on the Belgians and Luxembourgers, who probably deserve it more anyway, but get overlooked because they are small.
e81, one generally has to have heard and pronounced the sounds of a language prior to age 4 to get them exactly right, and after age 13 there is no chance, except for the sounds which you already have from previous languages. Hungarian is not an Indo-European language and is related to almost nothing. It is distantly related to the Finnish, Karelian, Estonian, Ugric, Samoyed group - about as closely as German is to Italian.
My sons, who grew up in Transylvania (which is about 20% Magyar), speak some Hungarian and used to be fluent, but native speakers can tell they have a Romanian accent.
The good news is that Magyars are charmed by people attempting their language, even if you get it wrong. In the cities, at least. Out in the rural areas they are suspicious of everyone anyway, even from the next village. Especially from the next village.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed May 23, 08:15:00 PM:
"e81, one generally has to have heard and pronounced the sounds of a language prior to age 4 to get them exactly right, and after age 13 there is no chance, except for the sounds which you already have from previous languages."
And here I thought I was doing pretty well with Arabic...
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Wed May 23, 11:39:00 PM:
Sometimes the French are subtle. About a year ago the city of Marseille set aside land for the construction of a mosque. At one time the land was the site of a slaughterhouse.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Thu May 24, 12:24:00 AM:
Do you think there's Muslim blogger out there in a parallel universe who's posting and inviting the same kind of comments about folks like you? LOL
By 
, at
Thu May 24, 12:38:00 AM:
The french got tired of CHIRAQ making a mess of their country and dropped the fool right off the effile tower
By , at
Thu May 24, 03:26:00 AM:
Chambers can't wait for the mullahs to get the bomb and nuke Israel so he can get a "big schlong porno hard-on" at the thought of all those dead Joooos.
