Word: rights
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Last Thursday afternoon, during the ceremonial raising of the national flags at the Vancouver Olympic village, the Mexican national anthem blared over the loudspeaker. Mexico's lone Winter Olympian, alpine skier Hubertus von Hohenlohe, stood at attention, right arm crossing his chest. That's right - Hubertus von Hohenlohe. If you're thinking that name doesn't sound very Mexican, you'd be absolutely correct. In fact, he's a descendant of German royalty, the son of Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe and Princess Ira Fürstenberg. Can't get more Mexican than that...
...launched by President Nicolas Sarkozy's government three months ago with much hype and patriotic ebullition - a series of 100-plus town hall meetings across France to debate what it means to be French in the 21st century. And even after opponents on the left and right alike criticized the initiative as a Machiavellian way of casting immigrants, their French-born children and especially Muslims as a threat to France's national identity, government officials defiantly took the initiative to term. This week it ended with a whimper, however when authorities issued a list of largely symbolic measures intended...
...Many observers saw the exercise as a political ploy - an effort by the conservative government to seduce extreme right-wing voters by fanning nationalist flames ahead of regional elections next month. Other critics said that while discussing French identity isn't objectionable in itself, people used the scores of open debates and the government's online forum to voice opinions that only served to offend public sensibilities. Some have even questioned whether the entire initiative may have backfired, doing more harm to Sarkozy's already tarnished image and undermining his party's chances in the March balloting. Early polls showed...
...Nicolas Dupont-Aignon, a conservative parliamentarian and usually a supporter of right-wing causes, said that the initiative "completely escaped" the government's control. "The government poorly framed this debate from the outset and - for electoral objectives - spoke of national identity rather than national unity," he says. While the media are now filled with fretting by conservatives about the right's chances in the March elections, politicians on the left aren't tempting fate by predicting victory. The left is, however, using the opportunity to bash Sarkozy's government. "What a fiasco: Operation National Identity, which was supposed to raise...
...politicians participating in the town hall meetings made what many considered to be racist or xenophobic comments. For example, a conservative mayor in eastern France argued that the country would be "eaten up" by immigrants who already constitute "10 million (people) we pay to do [expletive]," while a former right-wing minister warned that France risked disappearing "when there are as many minarets as cathedrals." Secretary of State for Family Affairs Nadine Morano also provoked a scandal when she appeared to describe young French Arabs as being unpatriotic and shunning work...