ucrdem
ucrdem's JournalFrench president Francois Hollande's historic Cuba trip leads EU detente
Source: AFP via India Times
By AFP | 9 May, 2015,
HAVANA: Francois Hollande will become the first French president to visit Cuba in more than a century on Monday, cementing Paris's leading role in the European Union's rapprochement with the communist island.
The EU suspended relations with Cuba in 2003 over a crackdown on journalists and activists, but it began talks to restore them in April 2014, aiming to persuade Havana to improve its human rights record.
It was under the French presidency of the EU in 2008 that political dialogue was first resumed between Brussels and Havana. Raul Castro had just assumed power from his brother Fidel and announced a series of economic reforms.
"France has always been a leader in the European Union. The fact that the French president is coming shows France's very important role in the dialogue between Cuba and the European Union," Eduardo Perera from the University of Havana told AFP.
Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/french-president-francois-hollandes-historic-cuba-trip-leads-eu-detente/articleshow/47211217.cms
tough job eh . . .
Links:
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bernie-sanders-obama-sounds-like-bush-and-clinton-117717922196.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/05/bernie-sanders-michael-froman-tpp_n_6419874.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/06/1355859/-Bernie-Sanders-To-Obama-Admin-Let-Me-See-The-Damn-TPP-Draft
As I've said before, that some people live for this kind of thing, but I find it repulsive. Matter of taste I guess.
Because McGovern is part of the VRWC.
The look in her eyes says it all and she's probably right.
RFI: Radio France strike ends after 28 days, mediator steps in
Regular programming to resume after unions end strike
By RFI, Thursday 16 April 2015
Most of the striking employees of public broadcaster Radio France returned to work Thursday and regular programming was to resume after unions ended a 28-day strike.
A mediator appointed by Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin last week will now begin reviewing points made by the group's 4,400-strong workforce and its management.
"I welcome the end of the conflict," Pellerin told AFP.
Unions had protested management plans to slash 300 jobs and shift some radio shows to the web - part of a broader government bid to encourage hiring and reduce state spending.
The last of five trade unions accepted a compromise reform deal on Wednesday and voted to return to work, ending round-the-clock music and abbreviated news broadcasts during a record-long strike for the public radio group.
The unions have been pitted against Radio France's chief executive, Mathieu Gallet, who was tasked with plugging a 21-million-euro hole in the broadcaster’s budget, 90 per cent of which is covered by French households with a television.
Gallet became especially unpopular after the French press revealed last month that renovation work in his office cost 100,000 euros, and that he hired an image consultant to the tune of 90,000 euros a year.
http://www.english.rfi.fr/economy/20150416-radio-france-strike-ends-after-28-days-mediator-steps
.................
listen to RadioFrance here: http://www.radiofrance.fr/
Au revoir les enfants
. . . is a film by the late Louis Malle, married to Candice Bergen before his death, about a headmaster named Lucien Bunel, or Père Jacques, who ran a boarding school in Fontainebleau that illegally sheltered three Jewish students, for which crime he was sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp where he died in 1945. The three students died Auschwitz:
In 1988 Louis Malle told a New York Times reporter: ''This was, for me, by far the strongest impression of my childhood, the memory that remains above all the others in vividness''. He told that he remembers how Father Jacques, as he was being led away with his three Jewish students, turned to the watching students and said: ''Au revoir et a bientot'' (Goodbye and see you soon.) Then, he said, “something took place that was very bizarre. Somebody started to applaud and then everybody was applauding, despite the shouts of the Gestapo to keep quiet”.
On January 17, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Lucien Bunel, also known as Father Jacques, as Righteous Among the Nations.
from: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/bunel.asp
I discovered this site recently in connection with this film so thanks for this and the other Holocaust threads BtA . . .
Hillary Clinton announces 2016 bid with video:
Official launch site: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/
The point of TPP is to boost US exports. That's why PBO is behind it.
Exporting what, you ask? Well, how about "flexible computer chips that can be woven into everything from the gears in a helicopter to the fabric in your shirt"? It's probably true that we stopped making TVs in the US a while back, but that train left the station long before Obama entered the picture. So here's his TPP agenda in a nutshell, from a speech last December 11:
And one of the reasons that we've been able to create so many jobs here in the United States is because our exports have been strong. Last year our businesses sold a record $2.3 trillion of Made in America goods and services. And these exports support more than 11 million American jobs -- typically, by the way, jobs that pay higher wages.
{snip}
I've said before I will go anywhere around the world to go to bat for American companies and American workers. We're going to keep on pushing trade agreements that benefit American companies and American workers and ensure that we've got a fair and even playing field, particularly in the fastest-growing markets.
{snip}
We're also announcing -- because manufacturing has been a real bright spot in our growing economy -- some additional measures to boost manufacturing here in the United States so we can sell more manufacturing goods overseas. We're announcing today more than $290 million in new investments to launch two additional high-tech manufacturing hubs. One is going to be focusing on flexible computer chips that can be woven into everything from the gears in a helicopter to the fabric in your shirt. Another is going to focus on advance sensors that can dramatically cut energy costs for our factories.
So far, we have launched eight of these hubs, and we intend to get 16 done, so we're more than half of the way there. And they’re helping us to compete for the next generation of manufacturing.
Read more: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/12/20141211311946.html#ixzz3QMeoR4Ur
So if we're going to complain that Obama hasn't created enough good jobs, he's still creating them, and TPP is part of the mix.
[French PM Manual] Valls vows to tackle French ‘apartheid’ after Charlie Hebdo killings
Source: RFI 
Article published the Wednesday 21 January 2015
In the wake of this month’s Charlie Hebdo attacks, France's Prime Minister Manual Valls told journalists on Tuesday that a form of apartheid exists in France. While some on the right judged Valls’s words “excessive”, politicians of right and left agreed that the government must build “social cohesion”.
“A territorial, social and ethnic apartheid has imposed itself on our country,” Valls told the press. “Social misery is coupled with the everyday discrimination over not having the right family name, skin colour or gender. This is not a question of making excuses - we have to face the reality of our country today."
Valls pledged to fight inequality in deprived areas on the outskirts of French cities, where there is often mass unemployment and a sense of exclusion from French social life.
Without referring specifically to this month's attacks by French-born Islamists in Paris, Valls said more needed to be done to ensure people from these areas felt like part of the nation.
“Every day we have to fight the terrible feeling that there are second-class citizens or some voices matter more than others,” he said.
Read more: http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20150121-valls-vows-tackle-french-apartheid-after-charlie-hebdo-killings
This is about a speech on Tuesday, but he's giving a long speech right with lots of details. Lots of euros for security forces etc. Hate to say it but it sounds like a French Patriot Act.
"USTR Fact Sheet on Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Outline"
posted Nov. 13, 2011:
link: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2011/11/20111113202959su0.4597829.html#axzz3Nij1eFRg
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles
Home country: US
Current location: East of East L.A.
Member since: Sun Jan 20, 2013, 08:15 PM
Number of posts: 15,512
