[san christobol]

France to reduce armed forces by a fifth
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90a29448-3bcb ... ck_check=1

By Ben Hall in Paris

Published: June 16 2008 19:42 | Last updated: June 16 2008 19:42

France is to reduce its armed forces by almost a fifth and close scores of bases under a defence overhaul that will increase spending on spy satellites, cruise missiles and transport.

Long-awaited defence legislative proposals – to be launched on Tuesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy – will aim to modernise Europe’s second most powerful military, creating slimmer but more deployable forces as part of a 15-year national security strategy that stretches beyond conventional territorial defence to deal with terrorism, missile strikes and natural disasters.

France will reduce its army to 88,000 deployable troops – roughly akin to British land forces – but will increase spending on technology and intelligence. In total some 54,000 jobs across all services are due to go.

The document marks a change of direction in several respects from existing French defence doctrine. It confirms France’s intention fully to rejoin Nato’s integrated military command structure, while maintaining complete control over its nuclear strike capability. “This differentiation no longer has its raison d’être,” said an official who helped draw up the white paper.

In return for rejoining Nato’s military command, France will press ahead with plans to boost the European Union’s role in defence.

Intelligence and anticipation of threats will play a greater role with spending on satellite technology to double to €700m ($1.08bn, £552m) a year. From 2015 France will start to put in place a ballistic missile detection system using infra-red sensors on satellites and long-range radar to be fully operational by 2020. It wants other countries to join in the project.

The white paper also redraws the map of possible French military intervention along an axis of potential trouble-spots running from the north Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, stretching from west Africa to south Asia.

The new policy was drawn up against tight spending restraints. As well as cuts in manpower over seven years, the government will seek to close many of the 470 military installations around the country at the risk of a furious political backlash, including from within Mr Sarkozy’s own party.

The government will use cost savings to increase spending on procurement from €15.5bn a year to an average of €18bn a year from 2009-2020.

Priorities will include developing France’s own cruise missile, a fleet of six submarines to fire them, and armoured personnel carriers for the army,

However, a decision on whether to build a second aircraft carrier at an estimated cost of €2.8bn has been put back until 2011 and some other large procurement programmes could also be delayed or scaled down.

Defence spending, which in 2008 amounts to €30bn or 2.3 per cent of gross domestic product, will be frozen in real terms until 2012, and will then rise by 1 percentage point ahead of inflation until 2014.

The defence overhaul will also trigger a transformation of France’s military links with its former colonies in Africa, with all 30 or so defence accords open to review and many expected to be scrapped. Instead of bilateral ties, which have often obliged Paris to intervene militarily on behalf of dubious regimes, France will favour multilateral solutions and intervention alongside European partners.

Sarkozy proposes bigger military role for EU
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b4e8712-3bcb ... fd2ac.html
By Ben Hall

President Nicolas Sarkozy will on Tuesday set out ambitious plans to give the European Union a bigger role in defence despite the institutional crisis triggered by Ireland’s rejection of the EU treaty.

In legislative proposals, France will call for the EU to be given its own structures to plan and run military operations, despite opposition to such a move in Britain, which fears such a capability would overlap and compete with the Nato military alliance.

Mr Sarkozy will also call for Europe to pool vitally needed logistical resources and will risk triggering controversy in some capitals by suggesting military transport aircraft could be pooled under a single EU command. It also wants EU countries to pool air-to-air refuelling and transport helicopters.

Until now, Mr Sarkozy has stressed the need to increase Europe’s capabilities rather than create new institutional structures. But the white paper reaffirms France’s long-standing desire for the EU to have a “permanent and autonomous strategic planning capacity”. It adds: “The development of international intervention by the EU also requires a stepping up of the means to plan and lead military operations.”

There is already a putative EU military staff based in Brussels, but its role consists essentially of giving strategic advice to Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy supremo, while military operations are run out of either Nato or national headquarters, and the UK wants to keep it that way. Some British officials had hoped a compromise between London and Paris could be found on the issue of planning by confining it to co- ordination of Nato military operations and the EU’s police and judicial activities.

But the white paper makes clear that France’s ambitions remain intact. “If we don’t have the means to influence strategic planning the Americans will say ‘What is all this about?’,” said an official who helped draw up the white paper.

France, which takes over the EU presidency on July 1, wants the bloc not only to meet its promise of making available 60,000 men for overseas missions of up to a year, but simultaneously to earmark troops for up to three long-term peacekeeping operations.

[Maas]

yeah... I know what you mean Donald.
Power corrupts. We can see how the US is handeling it.
What the world doesn't need is 2 of them.
But, nothing can stop the EU.

[Dr House]

I like the EU. A gigantic free trade area and a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe are good things.

-Dr House

[san christobol]

If I were proposing to my bloc of nations an increase in our collective security forces, I'd put off the military cuts for a while.

Points for focusing on deploy-ability, but aside from the obvious contradiction between proposing increases while you cut, this seems to be a diversionary tactic aimed at outsourcing France's budget woes. He openly admitted "the coffers are empty" - IS there a better way to cut your military budget than to do so in the guise of strengthening collective security? He's got a sense of humor.

House,

Free trade? Europe? Just because you can drive from Germany to Austria to buy gas doesn't necessarily put it in the free bracket... There's more regulation in europe than you could shake a stick at...hell, that's a significant source of centralizing power in the E.U : standardizing that morass of red tape.

[Maas]

There's more regulation in europe than you could shake a stick at

yeah well true.
I heard of farmers that left my country to go to canada. Just because of less regulations. Set up a farm in the middle of fucking no-where. The middle of fucking no-where aint to be found in the EU. With about everything you do, you always are annoying somebody else. It's more corwded. That's a main problem behind it.

[Dr House]

Free trade? Europe? Just because you can drive from Germany to Austria to buy gas doesn't necessarily put it in the free bracket... There's more regulation in europe than you could shake a stick at...hell, that's a significant source of centralizing power in the E.U : standardizing that morass of red tape.

Good point...

-Dr House

[stalker]

Long-awaited defence legislative proposals – to be launched on Tuesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy – will aim to modernise Europe’s second most powerful military, creating slimmer but more deployable forces as part of a 15-year national security strategy that stretches beyond conventional territorial defence to deal with terrorism, missile strikes and natural disasters.

Is the UK considered first? Or do they include Russia as part of Europe?

[QatzelOk]

European states should remilitarize, expel the Muslims

Where should they send them? Back to Palestine?

It's great how you support fascism againt minority religious groups, Donald. Really sets an interesting precedent.

[Dr House]

Really sets an interesting precedent.

Whose conclusion is banned by the Forum Rules.

-Dr House

[Maas]

European states should remilitarize, expel the Muslims

Where should they send them? Back to Palestine?

Maybe we should kick out the Jews too and get some sweet 2 for the price for 1 deal at Air Afriqiyah.

[Ombrageux]

The French military's post-Cold War defense policy has been retarded by the Gaullist consensus. Massive investment in a 'pure deterrence' nuclear strike force, lack of cooperation with the United States/NATO and a conscription-based army with low power projection were fine the context of the Cold War. It meant France was ready for the great battle for central Europe, but would not find herself automatically embroiled in a US-Soviet dispute.

In the post-Cold War era, these qualities are pretty useless. All these were on display in the Gulf War: inoperability with allied systems made France's contribution weak and her limited power projection capabilities meant that despite have an army much larger than the UK's, she could only field about a third as many troops. France was militarily negligible for these reasons, and I think it weighs in on Franco-American relations, where the British do have the leverage over US policy insofar as British support is valuable and conditional (British military support can represent about a 10% boost to US capabilities).

Since Chirac France has been doing major reforms: general military budget cuts, a professional volunteer army, cuts of the nuclear budget and more cooperation with NATO (which almost led to France's official reintegration into the alliance). The results are not stellar.. The fact is, if Europeans want to count for anything militarily, it will take more than reforms or bigger budgets. There needs a European army, period. The question is if we want it. Do we want another America?

[Donna]

Where should they send them? Back to Palestine?

They can go back to the old country... Algeria, Tunisia Libya and the like where most of them came from.

It's great how you support fascism againt minority religious groups, Donald

It's great how you wish to see the total Islamization of Europe.

[Ombrageux]

Have people who prattle on about Islam in Europe actually know what European Muslims are like? I would very much like to take some of these doomsayers to my workplace so they can meet them.

[Maas]

It's great how you wish to see the total Islamization of Europe.

Some tollerance you got towards other religions.
You can whine all you want in other threads at anti-semite remarks. But it's still lighyears away compared to the undertone on your thoughts about the muslim religion.

[Ombrageux]

You can whine all you want in other threads at anti-semite remarks. But it's still lighyears away compared to the undertone on your thoughts about the muslim religion.

The anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same hateful, essentialist coin. To these people there will always be an 'eternal Jew' and an 'eternal Muslim', both bent on corrupting Christian European civilization..

[Maas]

Opposition to Islam, as a religion, is fairly rational and far from bigoted. It is a natural response for the enlightened man to distrust Islam and Muslims.

no, it has everything to do with being biased and filled with hatered. I doubt your religion approves of that.

Anti-Semitism is Europe, which was racial in nature, is quite different than so-called "Islamophobia".

that's only because Jews like to see themselves as a race. But allowing interracial marriages and claim the kids a Jews only because of their mother is just rediculous. They are 1/2 Jews. And when this goes on for a bunch of generation... than the race dissapears. (You might want to ask yo mother about birds and the bees.)

What remains is the religion.
Same thing that sets the muslim apart.

[Ombrageux]

Opposition to Islam, as a religion, is fairly rational and far from bigoted. It is a natural response for the enlightened man to distrust Islam and Muslims.

You really are unreconstructed? Islam is not fixed or undiferentiated, any more than Judaism or Christianity. One can oppose this or that variant of Islam, there are batshit crazy people of every religion, and as much as we like to single out Islam, the fact is the entire 3rd world is ultra-conservative (think of Hindu women throwing themselves on the funeral fires of their dead husbands..). Different countries develop differently, many Islamic countries are ultra-conservative and mysogynistic, but that is no reason to resort to a base and dangerous essentialism.

Yes, there is always the token Muslim that everyone knows. Of your colleagues, what do you even know of their personal lives, their inner-most values and beliefs? As for Islam in Europe, there are a maltitude of problems: poor integration, domestic abuse, youth gangsterism, religious fanaticism, etc.

Well, how about this: most of the men are clean shaven, none of the women wear hijabs. Conversation is not different from that of native French. It needs to be reminded aparently that, there is no 'eternal Muslim', they're human beings: they hate that boss, dislike that job, joke about this, try to flirt with this or that boy..

None these of these find their cause in the religion. No more than, yes, crime or unemployment or 'lack of integration' was due to Northern Irish Catholics being Catholics. These problems have existed among that native European working class and lumpenproletariat as well as other migrant groups to Europe (or, to take the American experience, to any number of immigrants be they Asian, Irish or Italian, or Black Americans).

[Nets]

The anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same hateful, essentialist coin. To these people there will always be an 'eternal Jew' and an 'eternal Muslim', both bent on corrupting Christian European civilization..

QFT

Opposition to Islam, as a religion, is fairly rational and far from bigoted. It is a natural response for the enlightened man to distrust Islam and Muslims.

Dude are you going out of your way to make the Jews on this board look Neanderthals?

that's only because Jews like to see themselves as a race. But allowing interracial marriages and claim the kids a Jews only because of their mother is just rediculous. They are 1/2 Jews. And when this goes on for a bunch of generation... than the race dissapears. (You might want to ask yo mother about birds and the bees.)

And I suppose you have a source for this supposedly rampant intermarriage in Jewish history?

A study of haplotypes of the Y chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al[16] found that the Y chromosome of some Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding that "Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors."

Until recently, geneticists had largely attributed the genesis of most of the world's Jewish populations, including the Ashkenazim of Northern and Central Europe, to have been founded by the males who migrated from the Middle East and "by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism".[17] But new studies suggest that in addition to the male founders, significant female founder ancestry may also derive from the Middle East.[17]

Recent research indicates that a significant portion of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is also likely of Middle Eastern origin. A 2006 study by Behar et al[1], based on haplotype analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the first and second centuries CE. According to the authors, "the observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population."

Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only four women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.[1][18][19]

[QatzelOk]

It's great how you wish to see the total Islamization of Europe.

Between your Islamaphobia (which is really your way of actively being Jewish since you have no real faith in anything except your own vanity) and Net's eugenics obsession, there is a world of tolerance and freedom out there waiting to be explored.

I don't want Europe Islamified OR Jewified. I would like Europeans to have the total freedom to choose the faith of their choice, without the interference of crusaders or anti-foreigner propaganda like yours and Nets'.

[Maas]

And I suppose you have a source for this supposedly rampant intermarriage in Jewish history?

"by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism"

it went wrong right here with a pure race....