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National Front (France)

National Front (France)

:This article is about the French political party, not the WWII French resistance movement Front National. The Front National (National Front in English; acronym: FN) is a controversial political party in France. The party describes itself as a mainstream conservative party. The Washington Post has called it an anti-immigrant party [http://www.web.apc.org/~ara/documents/news/natfront.html] and the New York Times has described it as far-right. [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40712F63A5A0C758EDDAC0894DF484D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fC%2fChirac%2c%20Jacques] The Weekly Standard has called it fascistic. [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/429zmcyt.asp] In the 2002 presidential race Front National candidate Jean-Marie le Pen finished second to Jacques Chirac in a runoff election. The party was founded in 1972.

Leadership

1972 Jean-Marie Le Pen has led the party since its foundation. Other major members are:
- Bruno Gollnisch, general delegate of the Front National
- Carl Lang, general secretary
- Dominique Chaboche, relations with foreign far-right movements. Other prominent members include:
- Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter, who ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 2002 regional elections in the Île-de-France région Occasionally, Le Pen's leadership has been questioned. In a widely publicized move, Bruno Mégret and other major National Front members split away in 1998, alleging that Le Pen's provocative comments and his management style were limiting the National Front to being a marginal opposition party, without any possibility of gaining power. [http://www.bruno-megret.com/article.php3?cat=10&id=358] 1998

Political platform

The political platform of the Front National is mainly focused on the control of immigration, the repatriation of illegal immigrants and the priority of French citizens over foreigners for access to jobs and social services: in a standardized pamphlet delivered to all French electors in the 1995 presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen proposed the "sending back" of "three million non-Europeans" out of France, by "humane and dignified means". [http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/france/extreme_right_politics/1995/ak000006.html] However, in the campaign for the 2002 French presidential election, the stress was more on issues of law and order – one of the recurrent themes of the National Front is tougher law enforcement and higher sentences for crimes, and the reinstatement of the death penalty. The National Front regularly campaigns against the "establishment", which encompasses the other political parties as well as most journalists. Le Pen lumped all major parties (PC, PS, UDF, RPR) into the "Gang of Four" (an allusion to Communist China's "Cultural Revolution"). According to Front rhetoric, the French right-wing parties are not true right-wing parties, and are almost indistinguishable from the "Socialo-Communist" left; the corrupt "establishment" is betraying France, and it opposes by all means the coming of the Front. Other main positions include:
- greater independence from the European Union and other international organizations; in 2002, withdrawal from the Euro was suggested, but the suggestion was then largely withdrawn;
- the establishment of tariffs or other protectionist measures against cheap imports threatening the local agriculture or industry;
- a return to more traditional values
  - in the family area: making access to abortion more difficult or even illegal; paying parents (mainly mothers) who raise children; refusing gay culture;
  - in the cultural area: refusing "aberrant" modern art and promoting local traditional culture.

Electoral successes

modern art, 1932]] The Front National has been elected in several municipalities, typically where there is unemployment and tension between local people and immigrants. The party has tended to cut back on social services for immigrants as well as cultural activities deemed "anti-family" or "multicultural." Spending has been redirected to the municipal police and other services. One of the party's earliest successes came in the city of Dreux, when in 1983 they won the city council and deputy mayorship, amid rising unemployment and ethnic tensions. In Orange the Front National reduced school spending by 50%. In Vitrolles 150 civil employees were fired, while the police force was expanded from 34 to 70 officers. During the election campaign, members of the Department of Protection-Security shot and killed 17-year old Ibrahim Ali. In Vitrolles, the party sought to give 500 euros to the families of each French baby born, but was unable to do so for constitutional reasons. In Vitrolles the director of the cinema was fired because he had shown a movie about homosexuality and AIDS. In the 2002 presidential election many commentators were shocked when Jean-Marie Le Pen placed second and entered the second voting round. Almost all had expected the second ballot to be between Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin. This result came after the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, with some particularly striking cases of juvenile delinquency catching the attention of the media; furthermore, Jospin had been weakened by multiple candidacies from his own political block. The election brought the two round voting system into question as well as raising concerns about apathy and the way in which the left had become so divided. Chirac went on to win the presidency in an overwhelming landslide, aided by ubiquitous support in the media and academia, while Le Pen's constituency was either ridiculed or ignored by the French press. The day of the election, France's most popular national newspaper--Le Monde--featured a front page article entitled "Chirac, bien sûr" ("Chirac, of course").

See also


- Islam in France

External links


- [http://www.frontnational.com Front National homepage]
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,690101,00.html The Guardian: The true face of the National Front]
- [http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/france/extreme_right_politics/1995/ak000006.html 1995 presidential election]
- [http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/dappollonia.htm Brookings Institution] analysis of anti-Semitic violence in France and the rise of Front National Category:Political parties in France Category:Euronationalist parties Category:Right-wing populists Category:Fascism

Front National (French Resistance)

:This article is about the WWII French resistance movement. For the French far-right wing political party, see Front National. Front National was a World War II French Resistance movement, led by Pierre Villon. It was created by the French Communist Party. Category: French Resistance

Political party

A political party is a political organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. Some parties are not permitted to or choose not to seek power through elections and so may turn to other forms of pressure, sometimes terrorism. Parties often espouse a certain ideology, but may also represent a coalition among disparate interests. In parliamentary systems of government, most political parties have an elected leader who, if his or her party is elected, becomes head of government. In presidential systems, especially those with full separation of powers, there may not be a formal leader. In certain electoral situations, more common in elections using proportional representation than First Past the Post, a government may be formed of more than one party, called a coalition government. Partisanship is the tendency of supporters of political parties to subscribe to or at least support their party's views and policies in contrast to those of other parties. Differentiation is essential to most political parties: they must be different at least in some ways to other parties to compete in politics and win elections. Extreme partisanship is sometimes referred to as partisan warfare.

Nonpartisan, Single-party, two-party, and multi-party governments

In a nonpartisan system, no official political parties exist, or the law does not permit political parties. In nonpartisan elections, each candidate for office runs on her or his own merits rather than as a member of a political party. In nonpartisan legislatures, there are no typically formal party alignments within the legislature; even if there are caucuses for specific issues. Despite being nonpartisan, most members have consistent and identifiable voting patterns. Historians have frequently interpreted Federalist No. 10 to imply that the Founding Fathers of the United States intended the government to be nonpartisan. The administration of George Washington and the first few sessions of the US Congress were nonpartisan. The unicameral legislature of Nebraska is the only nonpartisan state government body in the United States. Many city and county governments are nonpartisan. Unless there are legal prohibitions against political parties, factions within nonpartisan governments generally evolve into political parties. In single-party systems, only one political party is legally allowed to hold effective power. Although minor parties may sometimes be allowed, they are legally required to accept the leadership of the dominant party. This party may not always be, however, identical to the government, although sometimes positions within the party may in fact be more important than positions within the government. In Dominant-party systems, opposition parties are allowed, and there may be even a deeply established democratic tradition, but other parties are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power. Sometimes, political, social and economic circumstances, and public opinion are the reason for others parties' failure. Sometimes, typically in countries with less of an established democratic tradition, it is possible the dominant party will remain in power by using patronage and sometimes by voting fraud. In the latter case, the definition between Dominant and single-party system becomes rather blurred. Examples of dominant party systems include the People's Action Party in Singapore and the African National Congress in South Africa. Also, one party dominant systems existed in Mexico with the Institutional Revolutionary Party until the 1990's, and in the southern United States with the Democratic Party from the 1880s until the 1970s. Two-party systems are states such as the United States and Jamaica in which there are two political parties dominant to such an extent that electoral success under the banner of any other party is extremely difficult. One right wing coalition party and one left wing coalition party is the most common ideological breakdown in such a system but in two-party states political parties are traditionally catch all parties which are ideologically broad and inclusive. The relationship between the voting system used and the two-party system was described by Maurice Duverger and is known as Duverger's Law. Duverger's Law Multi-party systems are systems in which there are multiple parties. In nations such as Canada and the United Kingdom, there may be two strong parties, with a third party that is electorally successful. The party may frequently come in second place in elections and pose a threat to the other two parties, but has still never formally held government. In some rare cases, such as in Finland, the nation may have an active three-party system, in which all three parties routinely hold top office. It is very rare for a country to have more than three parties who are all equally successful, and all have an equal chance of independently forming government. More commonly, in cases where there are numerous parties, no one party often has a chance of gaining power, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments. This has been an emerging trend in the politics of the Republic of Ireland.

Parties and directions

Political parties are often considered on a political spectrum. One typical spectrum has the Left associated with radical or progressive policies and the Right with conservative or traditional policies. Other analyses include other dimensions such as the political parties' acceptance of parliamentary democracy as opposed to authoritarian or totalitarian attitudes, and economic policies, the Left favoring social-democracy, socialism or communism, while the Right tends to favor laissez-faire economics or Fascism. Centrist parties often adopt a collection of policies that defy easy placing on the political spectrum. Many parties will have (formal or informal) factions within them that have differing views on policy direction.

Colors and emblems for parties

:Main article: see political colour Generally speaking, over the world, political parties associate themselves with colors, primarily for identification, especially for voter recognition during elections. Red usually signifies leftist, communist or socialist parties. Conservative and Christian democratic parties generally use blue or black. Recently in the United States, this trend has been reversed. Pink sometimes signifies socialist. Yellow is often used for liberalism. Green is the color for green parties and Islamist parties. Orange is sometimes a color of nationalism, such as in The Netherlands, or is a color of reform such as in Ukraine. In the past, Purple was considered the color of royalty, but is rarely used in modern-day political parties. Brown is generally associated with fascist or neofascist parties, going back to the Nazi Party's brownshirt security guards. Color associations are useful for mnemonics when voter illiteracy is significant. Another case where they are used is when it is not desirable to make rigorous links to parties, particularly when coalitions and alliances are formed between political parties and other organizations, for example: Red Tory, "Purple" (Red-Blue) alliances, Red-Green Alliances, Blue-Green Alliances, Pan-green coalitions, and Pan-blue coalitions. The emblem of socialist parties is often a red rose held in a fist. Communist parties often use a hammer, a sickle, or both.

International organizations of political parties

During the 19th and 20th century, many national political parties organized themselves into international organizations along similar policy lines. Notable examples are the International Workingmen's Association (also called the First International), the Socialist International (also called the Second International), the Communist International, (also called the Third International), and the Fourth International, as organizations of Working class parties, or the Liberal International (yellow), and the International Democrat Union (blue). Worldwide green parties have recently established the Global Greens. The Socialist International, the Liberal International, and the International Democrat Union are all based in London.

See also


- List of politics-related topics
- List of political parties
- Party class
- Political faction (both pre- and within a modern party)

External links


- [http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php U.S. Party Platforms from 1840-2004 at The American Presidency Project: UC Santa Barbara]
- [http://www.electionworld.org/parties.htm Political parties around the world]
- [http://www.politicalresources.net/ Political resources on the net]
- [http://www.broadleft.org/ Leftist political parties of the world] Category:Elections Category:Political parties ko:정당 ja:政党 simple:Political party

Washington Post

:This article concerns the newspaper. The Washington Post is also a patriotic march by John Philip Sousa The Washington Post is the largest and oldest newspaper in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It gained worldwide fame in the early 1970s for its Watergate investigation by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which played a major role in the undoing of the Nixon presidency. It is generally considered among the best three daily American newspapers along with the The New York Times, which is known for its general reporting and international coverage, and The Wall Street Journal, which is known for its financial reporting. The Post, unsurprisingly, has distinguished itself through its reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S. government. Unlike the Times and the Journal, however, it sees itself as a strictly regional newspaper, and does not print a national edition for distribution away from the East Coast. The majority of its readership is in the District of Columbia, as well as in the well-to-do suburbs of Maryland and Northern Virginia. As of September 2004, its average daily circulation was 707,690 and its Sunday circulation was 1,007,487, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, making it the fifth largest newspaper in the country by circulation, behind The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. While its circulation (like almost all newspapers) has been slipping, it has one of the highest market-penetration rates of any metropolitan news daily.

History

The paper was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins and in 1880 became the first newspaper in Washington, D.C. to publish daily. In 1899, during the Spanish-American War, the Post printed Clifford K. Berryman's illustration Remember the Maine. In 1905 Washington McLean and his son John Roll McLean, owners of the Cincinnati Enquirer, purchased a controlling interest. When John died in 1916 he put the paper in trust, having little faith in his playboy son Edward "Ned" McLean with his inheritance. Ned went to court and broke the trust, quickly driving the paper to ruin. It was purchased in a bankruptcy auction in 1933 by a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, Eugene Meyer, who restored the paper's health and reputation. Philip L. Graham, Meyer's son-in-law, would work his way up to become publisher upon Meyer's death in 1959. In 1954 the Post acquired its chief rival, the Washington Times-Herald, to become the only morning daily in Washington. Thenceforth its main competition was the Washington Star (Evening Star) until that paper's demise in 1981. Subsequently, the conservative Washington Times, established in 1982, has been a local rival, although as of 2005 the Times had a readership only around one-eighth of the Posts. After Graham committed suicide in 1963, control of the Washington Post Company passed to Meyer's daughter, Katharine Graham. She was publisher of the newspaper from 1969 to 1979, chairman of the board from 1973 to 1991 and chairman of the executive committee from 1993 until her death in 2001. Her son, Donald Graham, was publisher from 1979 to 2000 when Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr. took over as publisher and CEO of the Post. As of 2005 the Post had been honored with 18 Pulitzer Prizes, 18 Nieman Fellowships, and 368 White House News Photographers Association Awards, among others. It is part of the Washington Post Company, which owns a number of other media and non-media companies, including Newsweek magazine, the online magazine Slate, and the Kaplan test preparation service.

Political leanings

The Post is generally seen as being politically liberal, particularly on its opinion pages. For example, it usually supports Democratic candidates when making political endorsements. Conservative pundits often cite it along with The New York Times as epitomizing the "liberal media." The paper argues that its news coverage is politically neutral, an assessment that has its supporters but also draws fire from many directions.

Criticism by Ombudsmen

After the 1981 publication of [http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/litjour/spg2002/cooke.htm 'Jimmy's World'] (a story for which Post reporter Janet Cooke had been nominated by Bob Woodward for the Pulitzer Prize, which she subsequently won and later returned after it was established the story was a fabrication), Post Ombudsman Bill Green concluded an investigation with several comments and recommendations, including "The scramble for journalistic prizes is poisonous. The obligation is to inform readers, not to collect frameable certificates, however prestigious. Maybe the Post should consider not entering contests."[http://academics.smcvt.edu/dmindich/Jimmy%27s%20World.htm] In 1998 the Post printed a series of denials regarding public leaks of depositions given by President Clinton in the Jones v. Clinton case contrary to an Order of the Court. Dr. Deni Elliot of the Practical Ethics Center, after reviewing the matter, concluded that the Post knew the source of the illegal leaks yet "knowingly deceived its readers" by alleging the leaks could have come from the Court or the opposing counsel's office. "The Post," Dr. Elliot wrote in the Organization of News Ombudsmen’s publication, "intentionally lied to its readers in printing this set of denials...None of this sounds like the making of ethical principles". [http://www.newsombudsmen.org/elliott.html]

Notable contributors


- Anne Applebaum (writer)
- Carl Bernstein (writer)
- Herb Block (cartoonist)
- David Broder (writer)
- Tina Brown (writer)
- Art Buchwald (writer)
- Richard L. Coe (theatre critic/writer)
- Richard Cohen (writer)
- Janet Cooke (writer)
- E.J. Dionne (writer)
- Leonard Downie, Jr. (editor)
- Michel duCille (photo editor, photographer)
- Dan Froomkin (columnist)
- Meg Greenfield (editor)
- Jim Hoagland (writer)
- Colbert King (writer)
- Tony Kornheiser (writer)
- Charles Lane (writer)
- Mary McGrory (writer)
- Dana Milbank (writer)
- Alex Hummer (writer)
- Shirley Povich (writer)
- William Raspberry (writer)
- Ken Ringle (writer)
- Tom Shales (writer)
- Howard Simons (editor)
- Tom Toles (cartoonist)
- Gene Weingarten (writer)
- James Russell Wiggins (editor)
- Michael Wilbon (writer)
- George F. Will (columnist)
- Bob Woodward (writer)
- Robin Wright (writer)
- Colman McCarthy (columnist)
- Steve Coll (editor)
- Mike Grunwald (writer)

Executive Officers and Editors - Past and Present


- Philip Bennett
- Ben Bradlee
- Milton Coleman
- Jackson Diehl
- Leonard Downie, Jr.
- Donald Graham
- Katharine Graham
- Philip Graham
- Fred Hiatt
- Stephen P. Hills
- Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr.
- Colbert I. King
- Eugene Meyer

External links


- [http://www.washingtonpost.com Official website]
- [http://washpost.com/gen_info/history/timeline/index.shtml Timeline of the history of The Washington Post]
- Scott Sherman, Columbia Journalism Review, May 2002, [http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-stability.asp "Donald Graham's Washington Post"] Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The ja:ワシントン・ポスト nb:The Washington Post

New York Times

The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. It is owned by The New York Times Company, which also publishes some 40 other newspapers including International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The newspaper is nicknamed the "Gray Lady" and is often considered the newspaper of record in the United States.

History

United States The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. Raymond was also a founding director of the Associated Press in 1856. Adolph Ochs acquired the Times in 1896, and under his guidance the newspaper achieved an international scope, circulation, and reputation. In 1897 he coined the paper's slogan "All The News That's Fit To Print," widely interpreted as a jab at competing papers in New York (the New York World and the New York Journal American) that were known for yellow journalism. After relocating the paper's headquarters to a new tower on 42nd Street, the area was named Times Square in 1904. Nine years later, the Times opened an annex at 229 43rd Street, their current headquarters, later selling Times Tower in 1961. The Times was originally intended to publish every morning except on Sundays; however, during the Civil War the Times started publishing Sunday issues along with other major dailies. It won its first Pulitzer Prize for news reports and articles about World War I in 1918. In 1919 it made its first trans-atlantic delivery to London. The crossword began to appear in 1942 as a feature, and the paper bought the classical station WQXR in the same year. The fashion section started in 1946. The Times also started an international edition in 1946, but stopped publishing it in 1967 and joined with the owners of the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post to publish the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The Op-Ed section started appearing in 1970. More recently, in 1996 The New York Times went online, giving access to readers all over the world on the Web at [http://www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com]. A new headquarters for the newspaper, a skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano, is currently under construction at 41st Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. In 1964, the paper was the defendant in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which established the actual malice legal test for libel.

Times today

Today The New York Times is probably the most prominent American daily newspaper, sometimes being referred to as America's "newspaper of record". It has traditionally printed full transcripts of major speeches and debates. The newspaper is currently owned by The New York Times Company, in which descendants of Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role. The Times has won 90 Pulitzer Prizes – the most prestigious award for journalism in the US, presented each year by Columbia University – including a record 7 in 2002. In 1971 it broke the Pentagon Papers story, publishing leaked documents revealing that the U.S. government had been painting an unrealistically rosy picture of the progress of the Vietnam War. This led to New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), which declared the government's prior restraint of the classified documents was unconstitutional. In 1972, the Times exposed the Tuskegee experiment, in which African Americans suffering from syphilis were surreptitiously denied treatment over a period of decades. More recently, in 2004 the Times won a Pulitzer award for a series written by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman on employers and workplace safety issues. The Times has been going through a downsizing, for several years, laying off workers and cutting expenses [http://www.wnbc.com/money/4998266/detail.html], in common with a general trend among print newsmedia. The Times is based in New York City. It has 16 news bureaus in the New York region, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus.[http://www.nytco.com/company-properties-times.html#nyt] For the year ending Dec. 26, 2004, the reported circulation data for The New York Times were: 1,124,700 Weekday[http://www.nytco.com/company-properties-times.html#nyt] and 1,669,700 Sunday[http://www.nytco.com/company-properties-times.html#nyt]. The newspaper continues to own classical WQXR (96.3 FM) and WQEW (1560 AM). The classical format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards format of WNEW-AM (now WBBR) moved from 1130 AM to 1560. The AM station changed its call letters from WQXR to WQEW. By the beginning of the 21st century, The Times had begun leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM to this day.
The New York Times is printed at the following sites: Ann Arbor, Michigan; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Billerica, Massachusetts; Canton, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; College Point, New York; Concord, California; Dayton, Ohio (Sunday only); Denver, Colorado; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Gastonia, North Carolina; Edison, New Jersey; Lakeland, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Springfield, Virginia; Kent, Washington and Torrance, California. [http://www.nytco.com/company-properties-times.html#nyt]

Major sections

The newspaper is organized in three sections: ;1. News : Includes International, National, Washington, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Sports, New York Region, Education, Weather, Obituaries, and Corrections. ;2. Opinion : Includes Editorials, Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor. ;3. Features : Includes Arts, Books, Movies, Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword/Games, Cartoons, Magazine, and Week in Review

Style

Stylistically, the newspaper is quite conservative (see also: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage). When referring to people, it uses titles, rather than unadorned last names (except among the sports pages, in which last names stand alone). Its headlines tend to be verbose, and, for major stories, come with subheadings giving further details, although it is moving away from this style. It stayed with an 8-column format years after other papers had switched to 6, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography. In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-righthand column.

Web presence

The Times has had a strong presence on the web since 1995, and has been ranked one of the top web sites. It has a general policy of keeping articles freely available for a week and charges subscription for older articles. The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005.[http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/nyt-digital/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC&newsId=20050418006138&ndmHsc=v2
- A1039266000000
- B1133914259000
- DgroupByDate
- J2
- N1001162&newsLang=en&beanID=555004527&viewID=news_view] In September 2005 the paper decided to experiment with TimesSelect by charging subscription for daily columns.

Famous mistakes

In 1920, a New York Times editorial ridiculed Robert Goddard and his claim that a rocket would work in space: :That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. In 1969, days before Apollo 11's landing on the moon, the newspaper published a tongue-in-cheek correction: :Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error. On several occasions the Times has erroneously published premature obituaries, including:
- William Baer (a New York University professor) in 1942, as a result of a hoax by his students
- Alan Abel in 1980, who had faked his own death as an elaborate hoax
- Katharine Sergava (ballet dancer) in 2003, based on an earlier incorrect obituary in the Daily Telegraph.

Allegations of bias

The Times, like many major news organizations, has often been accused of giving too little or too much play to various events for reasons not related to objective journalism. One of the most serious of these charges is that before and during World War II, the New York Times downplayed evidence that the Third Reich had targeted Jews for genocide, at least in part because the publisher feared the taint of taking on any 'Jewish cause'.

Too liberal

More generally, many people believe that the Times hard news and soft news reportage have a consistent and pronounced liberal slant, particularly on social issues. Riccardo Puglisi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has written a paper about the editorial choices of the New York Times from 1946 to 1994, entitled, "Being the New York Times: The Political Behaviour of a Newspaper" (December 6, 2004). [http://ssrn.com/abstract=573801] [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID630598_code363330.pdf?abstractid=573801&mirid=1]. He finds that the Times displays Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog aspects. For example, during presidential campaigns, the paper systematically gives more coverage to Democratic topics, but only so when the incumbent president is a Republican. Among other things, the intermix of political commentary with art criticism in the Arts section of the paper is pointed to as evidence of bias. For example, A. O. Scott's film reviews sometimes contain barbs directed at social conservatives, and Frank Rich's Arts columns regularly attacked conservatives. The op-ed section, the Times regular columnists — who operate largely independently of the rest of the paper, and are subject to relatively little editorial oversight — have a mixed range of political orientations. However, some claim that this mix is unbalanced, and that this imbalance demonstrates a liberal bias at the newspaper. The 2005 roster of regular columnists ranges in political position from Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert on the left, to Nicholas Kristof in the center-left, to Thomas Friedman in the center, to David Brooks, formerly of The Weekly Standard magazine, and John Tierney on the right. However, attempts to place these columnists' positions on a one-dimensional American political spectrum do not completely characterize their actions or views. For example, Dowd strongly criticized President Clinton; Krugman (a professional economist) spoke as an economic centrist before he began criticizing the George W. Bush administration; and libertarian-conservative former columnist William Safire criticized the Patriot Act. The editorial page of the Times has not endorsed a Republican Party candidate for president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.

Too conservative

Conversely, many liberals and progressives have professed a belief that the Times hard reporting of foreign policy issues tends to be biased towards conservative views. In the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Noam Chomsky's allegations of the paper's deliberate downplaying of Indonesia's brutal invasion and occupation of East Timor are extensively illustrated as an example of this. Some liberals also believe that the Times reporting of economic policy issues tends to be biased towards upper-middle class or upper-class concerns over the concerns of the poor or working-class. During the 1980s a magazine called Lies of our Times was published as a regular critique of alleged right-wing bias in the newspaper, particularly on international issues.

Distinctions between news, comment, ads

On November 25, 2002, the Times ran a front-page story with the headline, "CBS Staying Silent in Debate on Women Joining Augusta" — part of a string of stories focusing on the Augusta National Golf Club, the host of the Masters Tournament, effectively demanding a boycott. Critics complained that this was an editorial usurping news space. Mickey Kaus wrote that the editor-in-chief, Howell Raines, was "on the verge of a breakthrough reconceptualization of 'news' here, in which 'news' comes to mean the failure of any powerful individual or institution to do what Howell Raines wants them to do." The Times has also been criticized for allowing Exxon-Mobil Corporation to run a regular paid "advertorial" commentary piece on its editorial page, although the practice is common in other U.S. newspapers. Some studies have shown that the Times selection of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor seem to "bracket" their editorial position, making the editorials appear to be moderate — although again this practice is hardly unique to the Times.

Times self-examination of bias

In summer 2004, the Times public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote a piece on the Times alleged liberal bias. He concluded that the Times did have a liberal bias in coverage of certain social issues, gay marriage being the example he used. He claimed that this bias reflected the paper's cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City. Okrent did not comment at length on the issue of bias in coverage of "hard news", such as fiscal policy, foreign policy, or civil liberties. However, he noted that the paper's coverage of the Iraq war was, among other things, insufficiently critical of the George W. Bush administration (see below). (In May 2005 Okrent was succeeded by Byron Calame.)

Recent controversies

In 2003, the Times admitted to journalism fraud committed over a span of several years by one of its reporters, Jayson Blair, and the general professionalism of the paper was questioned, though Blair immediately resigned following the incident. Questions of affirmative action in journalism were also raised, since Blair was African American. The paper's top two editors – Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald Boyd, managing editor – resigned their posts following the incident. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Times has persistently referred to "insurgents" rather than "terrorists" being responsible for the bombing and other acts of violence. This has been aggressively criticized, such as by frequent Times contributor Christopher Hitchens, as carrying a connotation of justification; Times columnist Thomas Friedman refers to them as "terrorists" or "Islamo-fascists". In April, 2004 the Times [http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=New_York_Times reversed its policy] of not using the term Armenian Genocide. Despite publishing [http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Armenian_Genocide_Contemporary_Articles dozens of articles about the Armenian Genocide] as it progressed, the Times for a period shied away from using the term in its articles as part of its editorial policy. The Turkish Government still actively denies a genocide occurred. Incidentally, Times columnist and former reporter Nicolas Kristof, a Pulitzer prize winner, has mentioned being of Armenian descent and has criticized the ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government, in his Times column. On May 26, 2004, the Times published another significant admission of journalistic failings, admitting that its flawed reporting during the buildup to war with Iraq helped promote the misleading belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html] While this "From the Editors" piece didn't mention names, a large part of the incriminated articles had been written by Times reporter Judith Miller. A second self-criticism by Okrent went further. "The failure was not individual, but institutional," he wrote. "War requires an extra standard of care, not a lesser one. But in the Times's WMD coverage, readers encountered some rather breathless stories built on unsubstantiated 'revelations' that, in many instances, were the anonymity-cloaked assertions of people with vested interests. Times reporters broke many stories before and after the war - but when the stories themselves later broke apart, in many instances Times readers never found out. ... Other stories pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors. ... The aggressive journalism that I long for, and that the paper owes both its readers and its own self-respect, would reveal not just the tactics of those who promoted the WMD stories, but how the Times itself was used to further their cunning campaign." [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/30bott.html] In August 2005, the Times was accused of attempting to unseal the adoption records of United States Supreme Court nominee Justice John Roberts's children, an unprecendented investigation by a newspaper. Journalist Brit Hume, of Fox News reported that the Times has been asking lawyers that specialize in adoption cases for advice on how to get into the sealed court records. The report went on, "Sources familiar with the matter tell Fox News that at least one lawyer turned the Times down flat, saying that any effort to pry into adoption case records, which are always sealed, would be reprehensible." The Times admitted, "Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions." However they also claimed, "They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue." The Times was condemned by the National Council for Adoption, “NCFA denounces, in the strongest possible terms, the shocking decision of The New York Times to investigate the adoption records of Justice John Roberts’ two young children. The adoption community is outraged that, for obviously political reasons, the Times has targeted the very private circumstances, motivations, and processes by which the Roberts became parents." [http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/special_packages/election2004/12316546.htm] Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, The Times has referred to those displaced by the hurricane as "refugees", while most news media refer to them as "evacuees". The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees defines "refugees" as those who have crossed a national border to escape unbearable conditions at home, while those who have been driven from home within their own nation are referred to as "internally displaced persons" (or "IDP's"). The The American Heritage Dictionary, however, defines refugee as "one who flees in search of refuge." In October 2005, Judith Miller was released from prison after an 85-day stay, when she agreed to testify to Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury. She said she finally relented only after receiving a personal waiver, both on the phone and in writing, of her earlier confidential source agreement with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, although Libby's lawyer claimed the offer of a waiver had been standing for a year. After Miller's appearance before the grand jury, she was released from her contempt of court finding, after which the New York Times became free to write their own account of the affair. This account [http://nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html] was published on October 16, along with a personal account by Miller [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html]. However, these accounts were widely criticized as revealing even more flaws and failings of both Miller and the Times than they answered, including uncooperativeness and dissembling by Miller to the Times and a lack of reasonable oversight of Miller’s work by the Times, as summarized for example in the Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR2005101601040.html]. This included several predictions and calls for Miller to be fired, including by Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University (and a former New York Times reporter); Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University; and Editor and Publisher columnist Greg Mitchell. Mitchell said Miller was guilty of “crimes against journalism” and “did far more damage to her newspaper than did Jayson Blair, and that’s not even counting her WMD reporting, which hurt and embarrassed the paper in other ways.” [http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306699] Miller resigned from the paper on 9 November, 2005.

Management and Employees

Publishers


- Adolph Ochs (1896-1935)
- Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1935-1961)
- Orvil Dryfoos (1961-1963)
- Punch Sulzberger (1963-1992)
- Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (1992- )

Executive editors


- Turner Catledge (1964-1968)
- James Reston (1968-1969)
- position vacant (1969-1976)
- Abe Rosenthal (1977-1986)
- Max Frankel (1986-1994)
- Joseph Lelyveld (1994-2001)
- Howell Raines (2001-2003)
- Bill Keller (2003- )

Current columnists


- David Brooks
- Maureen Dowd
- Thomas L. Friedman
- Bob Herbert
- Nicholas D. Kristof
- Paul Krugman
- Frank Rich
- John Tierney
- William Safire (retired as an Op-Ed columnist as of late January 2005, but continues as Language columnist)

See also


- CIA leak grand jury investigation
- New York Times bestseller list
- Current History
- Bulldog edition

Further reading


- Alex S. Jones, Susan E. Tifft. The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times. Back Bay Books (2000), ISBN 0316836311.
- Hess, John. My Times: A Memoir of Dissent, Seven Stories Press (2003), cloth, ISBN 1583226044; trade paperback, Seven Stories Press (2003), ISBN 1583226222
- Talese, Gay. The Kingdom and the Power, World Publishing Company, New York, Cleveland (1969), ISBN 0844662844.
- Leff, Laurel. Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Famous Newspaper, Cambridge University Press (2005), cloth, ISBN 100521812879.
- Mnookin, Seth. Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, Random House (2004), cloth, ISBN 1400062446.
- Campomenosi, Louis Joseph, III. New York Times Editorial Coverage of the American Involvement in Vietnam, 1945-1965: A Case Study to Test the Huntington Thesis of the Existence of an Oppositional Press in the United States.. Tulane University (1994)
- The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, revised edition. Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. New York: Times Books, 1999. ISBN 0812963881. Self-indexed.

External links


- [http://www.nytimes.com/ The New York Times on the Web]
- [http://www.wqxr.com/ WQXR, the Times radio station]
- [http://www.nytco.com/company-timeline-1851.html Official history of the Times]
- [http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1618 Celebrated NYT reporter was a federal informant] citing David Cay Johnston Perfectly Legal ISBN 1591840198
- "[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html The Times and Iraq]," New York Times, May 26, 2004.
- Daniel Okrent, "[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/30bott.html Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?]" New York Times, May 30, 2004.
- "[http://www.timeswatch.com/ Times Watch]", documents alleged liberal bias in the Times, run by the Media Research Center
- [http://www.newsfollowup.com/leakgate1.htm Plamegate timeline, AIPAC / Franklin Pentagon mole indictment, Niger yellowcake connections? at NewsFollowUp.com]. New York Times Category:The New York Times New York Times, The ja:ニューヨーク・タイムズ

Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard is an American conservative political magazine published 48 times per year. It made its debut on September 17, 1995 and is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It is viewed as a leading outlet of the influential pro-Israel neoconservative movement. Its current editors are William Kristol, chairman of the Project for the New American Century, and Fred Barnes. Other frequent contributors include Stephen Schwartz, Matt Labash, and Stephen Hayes. It is very popular among United States President George W. Bush's administration. According to Vanity Fair (July 2003; as quoted by Ben Bagdikian in The New Media Monopoly), the office of Vice President Dick Cheney alone receives a special delivery of thirty copies.

External link


- [http://www.weeklystandard.com/ The Weekly Standard website]
- [http://www.weeklystandard.com/advertising/readershipcirculation.asp Readership & Circulation] Weekly Standard, The Category:News Corporation subsidiaries Category:Neoconservatism zh-cn:旗帜周刊

Jean-Marie Le Pen

Jean-Marie Le Pen (born June 20, 1928) is a controversial French politician. He is the president of the nationalist and Front National. Much of the liberal media outlets consider the National Front and Le Pen to be far-right. Le Pen disputes the far-right qualification; at times, he has declared that his party was "neither Right, neither Left, but French"; at other times, he has stated that his party was right-wing and that the French parties generally considered to be right-wing were not truly so. He claims that most of the French political and media class are corrupt and out of touch with the real needs of the common people, and conspire to exclude Le Pen and his party from mainstream politics. Le Pen is known for advocating tough law enforcement policies, possibly including the reinstatement of the death penalty; strong restrictions on immigration to France from countries outside Europe; and withdrawal or at least far greater independence from the European Union. Jean-Marie Le Pen has, at times, made remarks considered to be racist and antisemitic, though, in recent years, he has been careful not to use controversial rhetoric prior to elections. He has run in several French presidential elections, qualifying for the second-round of the 2002 election, where he challenged current president Jacques Chirac.

Biography

Le Pen was born at La Trinité-sur-Mer, a small Breton harbour, as the son of a fisherman. Le Pen was orphaned as an adolescent; his father's boat was blown up by a mine. Nowadays he is a wealthy businessman, mostly because of a large inheritance received in 1977 from a political supporter. Le Pen studied political science and law, and was at one time the president of an association of law students in Paris. His graduate studies thesis, presented in 1971 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Loup Vincent, is titled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 or "The anarchist movement in France since 1945". From his first marriage (June 29, 1960 - 1985 or 1986) to Pierrette Lalanne, he has three daughters and nine granddaughters. The youngest of his daughters, Marine Le Pen, is a ranking officer of the Front National. On May 31, 1991, Jean-Marie Le Pen married Jeanne-Marie Paschos ("Jany"). Born in 1933, JM Paschos was previously married to Belgian businessman Jean Garnier. Pascho's father was a Greek merchant, and her mother is partly of Dutch descent.

Political career

A decorated veteran of the French paratroops in Indochina (1953), Suez (1956), and Algeria (1957), Le Pen started his political career in Toulouse when he became the head of the students union. In 1953 he called Vincent Auriol, President of the Republic at the time, and by using his former status he got approval for a volunteer rescue project to carry out disaster relief after a flood in the Netherlands. Within two days there were forty volunteers from his university, a group that would go on to help victims of an earthquake in Italy. In Paris, 1956, he became the youngest member of the French National Assembly, with the party of Pierre Poujade. In 1957, he became the General Secretary of the National Front of Combatants (FNC) as well as the first French politician to present a candidate of Muslim confession, Ahmed Djebbour, and to achieve his election. The next year, he was re-elected as deputy to the National Assembly and adhered to the parliamentary party National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), led by Antoine Pinay. During this period, Le Pen actively followed issues of the war and defense budget. In 1965 Le Pen became the director of the presidential campaign of Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. In 1972, he founded the nationalist, far-right party Front National. The electoral results of the Front National have been on the rise since the municipal elections of 1983. In 1984 and 1999 Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament. He was deprived of his seat by the European Court of Justice on April 10, 2003 (see below). In 1992 and 1998 he was elected to the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. His political career has been most successful in the south of France. Le Pen ran in the French presidential elections in 1974, 1988, 1995 and 2002. In the presidential elections of 2002, Le Pen obtained 16.86% of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, as a result of the poor showing by the Socialist candidate and incumbent prime-minister Lionel Jospin and the scattering of votes among fifteen other candidates. This was a major political event, both nationally and internationally, as it was the first time a far right-wing candidate had qualified for the second round of the French presidential elections. There was a widespread stirring of national public opinion, and more than one million people in France took part in street rallies, in an expression of fierce opposition to Le Pen's ideas. Le Pen was then soundly defeated in the second round when incumbent president Jacques Chirac obtained 82% of the votes. In the 2004 regional elections, Jean-Marie Le Pen intended to run for office in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur région but was prevented from doing so because he did not meet the conditions for being a voter in that region: he neither lived there, nor was registered as a taxpayer there. Le Pen complained of a government plot to prevent him from running. Some argue that this event was merely a scheme of Le Pen's to avoid defeat in the election. In recent years, Le Pen has tried to soften his image, with mixed success. He has maneuvered his daughter Marine into a prominent position, a move that angered many inside the National Front, concerned with the grip of the Le Pen family on the party.

Controversy

See National Front for a summary of Le Pen's political proposals. Le Pen is a controversial figure in France, but he consistently receives about 15%-18% of the vote. Opinions regarding Le Pen tend to be quite strong; a 2002 IPSOS poll showed that while 22% of the electorate have a good or very good opinion of Mr Le Pen, and 13% a favorable opinion, 61% have a very unfavorable opinion [http://www.ipsos.fr/CanalIpsos/poll/7542.asp]. Le Pen and former National Front leader Bruno Mégret top the unfavorable ratings, with 74% and 75% respectively. As described above, at the 2002 French presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of balloting. On May 1st, millions of people walked the streets protesting in opposition to Le Pen, in an unprecedented move against a presidential candidate. Le Pen was then soundly defeated at the second round, with voters from the whole political spectrum, aside National Front voters, voting for his opponent Jacques Chirac — including a high proportion of voters who did not support Chirac, and even those who disliked him. Slogans such as "vote for the crook, not the fascist" were heard. Le Pen and the National Front are described by all commentators except those from the Front to be far right. Le Pen himself disagrees with this label. Earlier on, Le Pen described his position as "Neither left nor right, but French" (Ni droite, ni gauche, français). He later described his position as right-wing, opposed to the "socialo-communists" (and other right-wing parties, which he deems are not real right-wing parties). Le Pen criticizes the other political parties as the "establishment" and lumped all major parties (PC, PS, UDF, RPR) into the "Gang of Four" (la bande des quatre — an allusion to the Gang of Four during China's Cultural Revolution). Le Pen has been severely criticized ([http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/04/22/france.election/ See CNN comments on political progress in 2002]) both at home and abroad for his perceived xenophobia and anti-Semitism. This perception is based on a string of remarks that Le Pen has made over the years, and positions he has taken, as well as Le Pen's acquaintance with former Nazis and Vichy France officials. As an example:
- He has made remarks which are widely considered to be anti-Semitic; for example, on 13 September 1987 he referred to the Nazi gas chambers as "a point of detail of the Second World War." Le Pen once made the infamous pun "Durafour-crématoire" ("crematory oven") about then minister Michel Durafour, a Jew; the corpses of the victims of the Nazi gas chambers were incinerated in such ovens. In February 1997, Le Pen accused President Chirac of being "in the pay of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the notorious B'nai B'rith".
- In May 1987 he advocated isolating those infected with AIDS (whom he calls "sidaïques1") from society by placing them in a special "sidatorium".
- On June 21, 1995, he attacked singer Patrick Bruel on his policy of no longer singing in the city of Toulon because the city had just elected a mayor from the National Front. Le Pen said "the city of Toulon will then have to get along without the vocalisations of singer Benguigui". Benguigui, a Jewish name, was Patrick Bruel's real name.
- In 2005, he claimed that the occupation of France by Nazi Germany "was not particularly inhumane".[http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_resumedoc/1,13-0,37-887101,0.html?message=redirection_article] During the Second World War, Nazi Germany occupied France, deported section of its Jewish population to extermination camps, retaliated against Resistance actions by killing civilians, tortured people suspected of being in the Resistance, and took civilians into forced labor. Le Pen is right in that it was not particularly inhumane, compared to the atrocities commited against for example, the Polish, Russians and others in Nazi-occupied countries. The population of France (disregarding it's Jewish population) was treated on a level much higher than that of other Nazi-occupied countries. In April 2000 he was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for physically assaulting Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003. It has also been established that he practiced torture in Algeria. Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War of Independence are amnestied in France, this fact was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchainé and Libération and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish this fact. However, because of the amnesty and prescription, there can be no further criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he committed in Algeria. Jean-Marie Le Pen has been criticized for his connections to figures associated with the Nazis, Vichy France or the Organisation Armée Secrète [http://www.col.fr/racisme/fn/oas.html], including:
- Roger Holeindre, member of the political bureau of the Front National; was a member of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS)
- Roland Gaucher, a former collaborator of Nazi Germany, was a member of the political bureau of the National Front;
- Louis de Condé, leader of the National Front in Auvergne and candidate to the 2004 regional elections had been sentenced in 1963 to life imprisonment for the attempted murder of president Charles de Gaulle as part of the OAS campaign of terror attacks. On December 5, 1997, during a public meeting with ex-Waffen SS Franz Schönhuber in Munich, he reiterated that "the gas chambers constituted a detail in the history of the Second World War". He was sentenced on December 26 by the Large Claim Courts of Nanterre for this affirmation. Le Pen supporters applaud his nationalistic pride and economic stance. However, Bruce Crumley in Time International, 6/5/022 writes: "Denunciations of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobic National Front (FN) as racist, anti-Semitic and hostile to minorities and foreigners aren't exactly new. More novel, however, are such condemnations coming from far-right movements like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), which itself won international opprobrium in 1999 after entering government on a populist platform similar to Le Pen's." + Critics sometimes attribute Le Pen's political success in southern France to economic concerns and mounting racial tensions, especially against the Arab community. Le Pen's success in the first round of the 2002 French presidential election - he finished second, but ultimately lost by a wide margin in the second round against incumbent president Jacques Chirac - is generally explained by the impatience of the French electorate with respect to the reduction of crime. The electoral campaign had largely been focused on an alleged burst of criminality in the recent years. Le Pen advocates tough law-and-order policies. Another factor in his success is his anti-establishment posture. Le Pen denounces the control that the main political parties (UMP and PS, which he groups as "UMPS") have on French political life. He argues that these parties are ineffective and corrupt (see corruption scandals in the Paris region). Le Pen's recurrent verbal excesses have led some in his own party to distance themselves from him. Bruno Mégret left the National Front to found his own party, claiming that Le Pen kept the Front away from the possibility of gaining power. Mégret wanted to emulate Gianfranco Fini's success in Italy by making it possible for right-wing parties to ally themselves with the Front, but claimed that Le Pen's attitude and outrageous speech prevented this. Le Pen's daughter Marine leads an internal movement of the Front that wants to "normalize" the National Front, "de-enclave" it, have a "culture of goverment" etc.; however, she is now out of favor with Le Pen. (Le Canard Enchaîné, March 9, 2005).

Quotes

We must tell the Algerians that it is not the case that they need France, but that France needs them. They are not a burden, and if they are for now, they will on the contrary be a dynamic part as well as the young blood of the French nation into which we will have integrated them. I claim that in the Muslim religion there is nothing, in the moral point of view, that would be incompatible with making a believing or practicing Muslim a full French citizen. Very much on the contrary, its basic principles are the same as for Christianity, which is the basis of Western civilization. On the other hand, I do not believe that there exists an Algerian race, any more than there exists a French race... I conclude: let us offer to Algerian Muslims entrance and integration in a dynamic France. Instead of telling them as we do now: "you are very expensive, you are a burden", let us tell them: "we need you, you are the youth of the nation". :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, Journal officiel de la République française, January 28, 1958. Said when Algeria was still a part of Metropolitan France before it attained independance. There must be an authority, and we believe that the most qualified authority in a household is the man's. :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, La droite aujourd'hui, 1979 They [the immigrants] will ruin, invade, overflow us, sleep with our wives [or women], daughters and sons. :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, 1982 The 'sidaïques1', by breathing the virus through all their pores, put into question the equilibrium of the nation... The 'sidaïque' is contagious by his sweat, his saliva, his contact. It's a kind of leper. :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, May 6 1987 on the TV station Antenne 2 Yes, I do believe in the inequality of races! :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, August 31 1996. Olympic games show clearly inequalities between the black and white races concerning, for example, athletes, and runners in particular. It's a fact. [...] I'm stating what I see. [...] Egalitarianism is simply absurd. :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, September 9 1996. If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what's called a detail. :-- Jean-Marie Le Pen, December 5 1997 Munich.

Notes

1 "SIDA" = Syndrome d'immunodéficience acquise, the French name for AIDS. "Sidaïque" is a word coined by Le Pen, meaning "person infected with AIDS" (the correct word in french is "sidéen" for a man and "sidéenne" for a woman).

See also


- Politics of France

External links


- [http://english.le-pen.info/ Jean's personal website]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1911200.stm Profile: Jean-Marie Le Pen]
- [http://www.frontnational.com/anglais/index.htm Front National homepage]
- [http://membres.lycos.fr/manowe/anti-fn/discours.htm A collection of quotes from Jean-Marie Le Pen] (in French)
- [http://www.adl.org/international/le-pen_new.asp About anti-Semitic remarks]
- [http://www.algeria-watch.de/farticle/1954-62/lepen_tortionnaire.htm About torture in Algeria]
- [http://www.fyifrance.com/fnind.htm FYI France, "The Front National" (extensive bibliography, works in English & French & other)] Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Jean-Marie ja:ジャン＝マリー・ルペン

Jacques Chirac

, (born November 29 1932 in Paris) is a French politician who is currently President of the French Republic. He was elected to this office in 1995 and re-elected in 2002, and his current term expires in 2007. As President, he is an ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra and Grand Master of the Légion d'honneur. In 1959, after completing studies at the Sciences Po and the École Nationale d'Administration, Jacques Chirac began his career as a high-level civil servant, and soon entered politics. He has since occupied various senior positions, such as minister of agriculture, prime minister, Mayor of Paris, and finally president of France. He has stood for lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism; and business privatization. He has also argued for more socially responsible economic policies, and was elected in 1995 after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). His economic policies have at various times included both laissez-faire and dirigiste elements. On European Union issues, he has ranged from adopting eurosceptic stances on some issues to rather more pro-EU positions. In 1956, he married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, with whom he has two daughters, Laurence and Claude, of whom the latter has long been his public relations assistant and personal advisor. He is a Roman Catholic. Bernadette and Jacques Chirac have also informally adopted a boat people refugee, Anh Dao Traxel, whom they took into their home in 1979, when she was 21. She is considered as their foster daughter.

Youth and studies

foster Jacques Chirac studied at:
- Lycée Louis-le-Grand (graduated 1950)
- Institut d'études politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) 1951-1954 (Public Service and Politics). (In 1951, he wrote a minor thesis, titled The development of the port of New Orleans, including a part dedicated to flood risks)
- Harvard summer school in 1953
- armoured cavalry officer academy in Saumur (ranked 1st)
- École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) in 1959 (National School for Government Service; ranked 10th) In his early career, Chirac was initially attracted by left-wing politics. He sold the Communist newspaper l'Humanité and signed the Communist-inspired Stockholm Call against nuclear weapons in 1950. These left-wing ties later proved to be a hindrance to him, for instance in his first visit to the United States and in his military career. Although he finished first in his class at the armoured cavalry officer academy of Saumur, the military wanted to de-rank him because they did not want a "Communist" to become an officer. However, Chirac's extensive family acquaintances had him ranked back at his former position . After completing officer's school, Jacques Chirac volunteered to be deployed in Algeria while the Algerian War of Independence was raging, even though his family connections would easily have allowed him to obtain a safe position away from the war. He was wounded during his tour of duty.

Early political career

Inspired by General Charles de Gaulle to enter public life, Chirac continued pursuing a civil service career in the 1950s. He attended Harvard University's summer school before entering the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), the elite, competitive-entrance college that trains France's top civil servants, in 1957. After earning a graduate degree from the ENA in 1959, he became a civil servant and rose rapidly through the ranks. As soon as April 1962, Chirac was appointed head of the personal staff of Georges Pompidou, then prime minister under de Gaulle. This appointment launched Chirac's political career. Pompidou considered Chirac his protégé and referred to him as "my bulldozer" for his skill at getting things done. The nickname "Le Bulldozer" caught on in French political circles. Chirac still maintains this reputation. "Chirac cuts through the crap and comes straight to the point...It's refreshing, although you have to put your seat belt on when you work with him", said an anonymous British diplomat in 1995. At Pompidou's suggestion, Chirac ran as a Gaullist for a seat in the National Assembly in 1967. Chirac won the election and was given a post in the ministry of social affairs. (Gaullists have historically supported a strong central government and independence in foreign policy.) Although more of a "Pompidolian" than a "Gaullist", Chirac was well situated in de Gaulle's entourage, being related by marriage to the general's sole companion at the time of the Appeal of June 18, 1940. Chirac rose to become economy minister in the late 1960s, serving as department head and a secretary of state. As state secretary at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (1968-1971), he had worked closely with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who headed the ministry. In 1968, when student and worker strikes rocked France (see May 1968), Chirac played a central role in negotiating a truce. The young technocrat from ENA then rose to fame; Chirac was caricatured as the archetypal brilliant ENA graduate in an Asterix graphic novel. Chirac's first high-level post came in 1972 when he became minister of agriculture and rural development under his mentor Georges Pompidou, who was elected president in 1969. Chirac quickly earned a reputation as a champion of French farmers' interests. As minister of agriculture, Chirac first attracted international attention when he assailed U.S., West German, and European Commission agricultural policies that conflicted with French interests. In 1974 Chirac was appointed Minister of the Interior. From March 1974 he was entrusted by President Pompidou with preparations for the presidential election then scheduled for 1976. However, these elections were brought forward by Pompidou's sudden death on 2 April. In 1974 former minister of economy and finance Giscard d'Estaing, a non-Gaullist centrist, was elected Pompidou's successor amid France's most competitive election campaign in years.

Prime Minister, 1974-76

When Giscard became president, he nominated Chirac as prime minister on 27 May 1974. At the age of just 41, Chirac stood out as the very model of the jeunes loups ("young wolves") of French political life. However, the government could not afford to ignore the narrow margin by which Giscard d'Estaing had defeated the United Left candidate, François Mitterrand, in 1974. Giscard, not himself a member of the Gaullist Union des Démocrates pour la République (UDR), saw in the essentially pragmatic Chirac the qualities needed to reconcile the "Giscardian" and "non-Giscardian" factions of the parliamentary majority. As prime minister, Chirac quickly set about persuading the Gaullists that, despite the social reforms proposed by President Giscard, the basic tenets of Gaullism, such as national and European independence, would be retained. Citing Giscard's unwillingness to give him authority, Chirac resigned as Prime Minister in 1976. He proceeded to build up his political base among France's several conservative parties, with a goal of reconstituting the Gaullist UDR into a neo-Gaullist group, the Rally for the Republic. In December 1974, then vice-president of Iraq Saddam Hussein invited Chirac to Baghdad. Chirac accepted and visited Iraq in 1975. Saddam Hussein approved a deal granting French oil companies a number of privileges plus a 23 per cent share of Iraqi oil. France also sold a nuclear reactor called Osirak to Iraq.

Chirac's First Ministry, 28 May 1974 - 27 August 1976


- Jacques Chirac - Prime Minister
- Jean Sauvagnargues - Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Jacques Soufflet - Minister of Defence
- Michel Poniatowski - Minister of the Interior
- Jean-Pierre Fourcade - Minister of Economy and Finance
- Michel d'Ornano - Minister of Industry and Research
- Michel Durafour - Minister of Labour
- Jean Lecanuet - Minister of Justice
- René Haby - Minister of Education
- Christian Bonnet - Minister of Agriculture
- Robert Galley - Minister of Equipment
- Simone Veil - Minister of Health
- Pierre Abelin - Minister of Cooperation
- Vincent Ansquer - Minister of Commerce and Craft Industry
- Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber - Minister of Reform
- André Jarrot - Minister of Quality of Life Changes
- 9 June 1974 - Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber leaves the cabinet and is not replaced as Minister of Reforms.
- 1 February 1975 - Yvon Bourges succeeds Soufflet as Minister of Defence.
- 12 January 1976 - Jean de Lipkowski succeeds Abelin as Minister of Cooperation. Raymond Barre enters the ministry as Minister of External Commerce.