Word: frenchness
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Hannity, Sean •idiotically huge fuss is made by about Obama's preference for Dijon mustard, as if this was now going to make all those crazy tens of millions of Americans who like him suddenly realize that he's a contemptibly effete snob - why, he's practically French, he might as well be John Kerry! - and really, we were all so much better off with his criminally ignorant predecessor...
...three leaders fit the stereotype of the African "Big Man," having seized and maintained power by force. Each one, Transparency International alleges, has also used his position to enrich himself. That, French foreign-policy specialists say, has been done with the complicity and connivance of successive French governments maintaining the traditional Françafrique policy of retaining influence among former colonies. French lawyers for each of the leaders have flatly refuted the allegations. In Gabon - where Bongo is in temporary seclusion to mourn the death of his wife - government spokesman Alain Akouala Atipault assured that "there's nothing concrete...
...Françafrique is a Gaullist creation that integrated leaders from France's African sphere as virtual members of the French political and strategic élite," explains Antoine Glaser, a specialist on Franco-African relations, and author of the recent book Sarko in Africa. "That relationship has been based on French recognition of services rendered, and meant the interests of African leaders and their families that make up the first circle of power have come before the actual populations they're supposed to represent...
...France's coddling, critics have long complained, has allowed its client regimes in Africa to quash political opposition, shackle democracy and siphon off untold fortunes from the national coffers for their personal use - even donations to French political parties of all stripes. According to the Transparency International complaint that Desset has decided to investigate, the Bongo and Sassou-Nguesso families hold 70 and 111 bank accounts in France respectively, and own a total of 31 pricey homes or buildings in and around Paris. They also boast entire fleets of cars in France. Listed in the Obiang Nguema family's holdings...
...better part of 200 years, conservatives followed a different path. British statesman Edmund Burke was the movement's founder. A fierce critic of the French Revolution, Burke had contempt for rigid ideologues of all stripes and instead attached conservatism to restraint, custom and convention...