Word: french
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...United States." Carter authorized $2.5 million worth of training for Zaïrian military officers and $17.5 million in credits for the purchase of "nonlethal" equipment, including medical supplies and spare parts. With that as a prologue, the Administration announced that military transports would fly support missions for the French and the Belgians...
Fedayeen on both sides of the Litani seemed particularly bitter about the French troops. 'They came in thinking this was Algeria," complained a young commander of the P.F.L.P., "and that they could knock people around as they pleased." For their part, the French, whose headquarters are just south of Tyre but who are not permitted by the Palestinians to enter the city itself, spoke bitterly about what they called "the lies" being spread about them. Clearly, the French paratroopers have been stunned by the serious wounding of their commander, Colonel Jean-Germain Salvan, in a fight with a Palestinian...
Outside the French base camp is a hastily built row of canvas shops where the entrepreneurial Lebanese sell everything from cigarettes to transistor radios. A tailor sitting at his sewing machine says he is doing "terrific business" cutting and making tailored summer uniforms. One of the bestselling items is a spiral punk made in China and thought by the paras to be the best defense against the horde of mosquitoes. "C'est la vie," says a French trooper of the punk's nauseating aroma. "Better the smell than the bites...
Gradually the French are learning to make their duty a little more bearable. They send out wine tasters to sample the local vintages and buy the best bottles they can find for their mess. They also have what is known as the "Air France raiding party," a group that drives up to Beirut daily to pick up delicacies, newspapers and mail from Paris...
Predictably, there are occasional grumblings about the blossoming foreign presence. Southern Florida has long had a large Cuban population, but more recent arrivals include tens of thousands of French Canadian small businessmen and their families, who have fled Quebec out of fear that it may secede from Canada and pitch the country's economy into a tailspin. In Hollywood and Hallandale, just south of Fort Lauderdale, 20% of the population is now French speaking; the Canadian flag flies over bars, restaurants and motels, many of which are Canadian owned. Longtime residents gripe that the new arrivals are clannish, refuse...