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France's highly regarded mainstream paper Le Monde also published the key, repeating it on purpose in their article. Now imagine how those AACS-LA lawyers will get laughed out of french courts should they try to curb Le Monde's freedom of press! C'est trop tard messieurs, get over it.

No mainstream media. Yeah Right.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,3 6-900258@51-898967,0.html
It's not the parties who polled badly which complain, it's the electors. I am a Sarkosy elector (polled nice, thanks), and I can tell you I'm not happy with the queuing.

I'll just translate the last phrase from the article:
A 20 h 45, les derniers électeurs du bureau 5 font encore la queue derrière la grille. Les derniers ne verront pas le soleil se coucher.
At 8 45 PM [poll supposedly closed at 8], the last voters from poll place 5 are still queuing behind the closed doors. The last ones will not see the sun set.

Only because you don't pay attention. Off the top of my head I can think of several that happened in England, Germany, and Canada, and a quick web search will show others happening in Japan, China, Yemen, and a few other places. Tragic events like this that happen in the US certainly get reported much more on US news sites, but thats pretty much to be expected. But really, your ignorance of other such tragic incidents taking place in other countries doesn't mean that they don't happen.

Here is a French news site that shows a few.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/module_chrono/0,11-0@2-3 210,32-812886@51-896961,0.html/

You could try Le Monde or La Vanguardia for starters. English may be the lingua franca of the Internet, but there are plenty of sites out there that use other languages. IHMO, easy access to other languages and cultures is one of the best things about the Internet, and I would be loath to give it up.

It's not "everyone" that would have to pay to their ISP. That would be optional. Here's an interview (english translation) of the deputy, Alain Suguenot, that proposed the amendment. The ISP would then transfert the money their receive from their customers to the SACEM (sorry, no page in english on Wikipedia), the French RIAA, like it's already done for television broadcasts.

I regularly read newspapers from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, latin america and Denmark. IT's interesting to see them looking for different formulas to adapt to the challenges of the internet.

Several french newspapers (like Liberation and Le Monde) have tried to specialize their print and web based deliveries in such a way that the print edition offers in depth reports and analisys, while the web based portion is kept up to date with the cutting-edge-now-unfolding stuff. A few spanish papers seem to be following this trend (like El Pais).

I get the impression that danish papers don't really have a strategy, which stikes me as odd since Denmark is one of the most wired countries in the world. A lot of newspapers there seem to see their web presence as a way to publicize their paper and maybe sell a few stories, but there is no overarching strategy.


In the US you see lots of different approaches, like the Wall Street Journal which practically cut itself out of the blogging trend by keeping all of its material under lock and key except to paying subscribers, thereby insuring that their stories aren't linked to, the New York Times wants you to sell your soul to read anything, and Salon has the interesting strategy of making you watch an add to read their stuff. A kind of contract based approach.

I would really like to see a comparative study of the merits and shortcomings of different approaches. I would also like to see studies on how different reader demographics respond to different paper-web mixes.

... The bill on software patents has been definitely rejected this morning.
I've just read the AFP wire on Le Monde's homepage

Just saw an article on Le Monde (in French) saying that FF now accounts for 14% of internet traffic in Europe overall, with anything from 7% (Lithuania) to 30% (Finland) in individual countries. It seems kind of amazing to me that in Germany it has achieved 24%. Is this the fastest new product acceptance in history? (Chime in if you can think of a faster /bigger one).

The trouble with so much success is that people are going to come out the woodwork claiming trademark issues. And I can only wonder what will happen when it reaches 50%...

When I realized I was reading the online version of LeMonde on a daily basis, I switched to the subscriber mode, just to be honest : 5E/month isn't that expensive and I DO read the paper.
When subscribing, I got rid of almost all the ads and got a account with 5 archived articles a month (older than 1 month, which you normally have to pay to access), with a upper limit of 25 articles.

I am very happy with this.

Perhaps it's more subtle in the original French, but Jeanneney seems to be more whining about the limited funding that the government has provided for the National Library's efforts so far, and waving the twin red-white-and-blue flags of French national pride and the insidious spread of American culture to draw attention to the problem.

He's not saying it's a bad thing in itself... but he's saying if the American culture is not to overwhelm the rest of the global culture, Europe needs to get with the program... or be forgotten.

In other words, "Publish or Perish."

According to Michel Rocard (former France Prime Minister, now European Deputy), companies like US Majors (Microsoft & Co), Nokia or Alcatel exerted pressure on european commission to have a second look at the pattent issue. In this interview (French) Michel Rocard says that the expert group that was supposed to help the commission, was in fact formed by Microsoft and other IT companies.

Rocard said : "We never could have talked a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about free ideas circulation, free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit cease to be a growth vector. They don't seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation can't be pattented. It's simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case."

18 may 2004, Commission presents a new text even more liberal than the first one, and try to impose it during Agriculture Minister Concil, which primary objective was FISHING. Thanks to Poland interventions, the vote is avoided.

"Concerning France, no word from it. Jacques Chirac claimed himself against extensive software pattenting during his presidential campaing. But the current industry minister, Patrick Devedjian said nothing against the text."

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36- 398497,0.html Michel Rocard (European deputy) explains (in french) his point of view on the subject and why its being pushed into application.

There are few carriers (one recent French and 2-4 old British one?).
For the subs, there are more, including top-level nuclear French subs both for conventionnal attack and information gathering (6, "Rubis" class) and for nuclear dissuasion (the third of the new generation "SNLE" has just been launched (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36 -388624,0.html

Besides, I think Europe should not ruin itself to follow the US weapon madness because this led the CSSR to go bankrupt and the USA are currently ruinning themselves with their so-costly military. But we Europeans should really keep our eyes on Russian madmen and on Chinese "free markets" dictators. Those are our next militaristic ennemies.
Hopefully, the US people won't let its rullers attack Europe. And terrorism should be fought mostly with intelligence means backed by top level troops as in Afghanistan.

Mondo mistake on "le Monde", France's #1 newspaper:

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_articleweb/1,1 3-0,36-381840,0.html

Quote: "David Gross, 63 ans, physicien de l'université de Californie à Berkeley, David Politzer, professeur à Pasadena, au California Institute of Technology, et Frank Wilczek, 53 ans, professeur au Massachusetts Institute of Technology, se partageront le prix, doté comme chaque Nobel de 10 millions de couronnes suédoises (1,1 million d'euros)."


According to them, Dr. Gross was from UC Berkeley and not UCSB.

According to this article (french)
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3226,36- 381768,0.html
The incident is really improbable since the brakes are three times stronger than the engine.

And after investigations, they didn't find any evidence of a strong braking

I said nothing about Moore and there was nothing in his movie that was new to people who get their news from sources other than Fox News. I'm always puzzled that people are learning all this stuff for the first time from Moore's movie. The international media have been covering it for ages.

Yeah, it's so hard for Americans to find foreign news. It would be cool if there was a box you could sit down in front of that would somehow talk to foreign news organizations and get their news. They could hook up to organizations like Le Monde, Xinhua, Pravda, and the BBC, and let you read the stories they put out. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep dreaming.

The Monde (famous French newspaper) published an article on the story a few days ago. An English translation can be found here.

They showed that the second of the three blacked-out sections of the released portion of the PDB was most likely "Egyptian."

In this particular case, the section was relatively short, so it wasn't tough to come up with a possible word list, but I wonder how well they'll do on the other sections, which are longer and therefore more likely to be multiple words. In the end, they rely on context to decide which of the possible strings is most likely the correct, which even in this case allowed for some close possiblities. A member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad would probably be most likely to interact with a member of an Egyptian service, but could just as well have spoken to a member of an unofficial (e.g., news) service.

1. Well I guess that's the main difference between say France and USA. US constitution guarantees free speech without exception. French constitution does make exception. Racists, for instance.
2. Fact: About 6 millions jews died during WW2. So you're not only a racist, you're also a holocaust denier? Lemme guess, holocaust is not what we learnt in history class right? Not that big a deal, even? Geez.
3. Bullshit. You're probably trying to confuse people regarding a law recently voted in France (link in french) which applies to schools, where everyone will be forbidden to display any visible religious symbol (one pillar of scholar system in France is laicite). That applies to all religions.

Don't let anyone fool you. The French are just as bad, if not worse, to Americans as we are to them.

(You can choose not to believe these since there is no reference, or I can quickly write up my experiences in France and link to that, it is just as valid).

Parisians are the worst that I met, Southern France is quite nice and the people are too. But Paris, wow, they are terrible. They will run into you at full speed on roller skates and then run away.

They also (this past summer) called a young person of asian decent a 'nigger' simply because he was an American (yes, you can tell) and dark skinned.

Once you get outside of Paris, the people are mostly nice (there are always exceptions in every crowd and this goes both ways). My guess is that too many people only see Paris, have some bad run-ins, and assume all French are like that.

I personally dislike the 'newspaper' le Monde (the world). On Sept 11th of this year they published a political cartoon of what looked like a 747 with "USA" on the side hitting two towers that appeared to be the WTC, the towers being labeled "Chille". That is unexcusable, at least to me.

-CPM

Damn ! He's at it again ! Jean Marie, won't you ever learn ???

Thomas Miconi-

(PS: More seriously, the man seems to be called Alex Serge-Vieux. Never heard about him, but if his credentials are genuine, we can say two things:
1) He's probably not the most stupid manager on this planet (Paris-Dauphine and La Sorbonne means "good", especially if it's on the teaching side of the desk; same thing for Le Monde).
2) His political inclinations seem to lean on the center-left. He served as a top civil servant under Socialist governments only. In the French system, this speaks a lot.

Or maybe when we stop finding ricin in Paris.

I rest my case. News media prefer to talk about terrorist "news" than follow up on them and
find out (in French) that there was no ricin in Paris.

Countries everywhere are (have been and will be) threatened by other countries or terrorist groups. There is nothing new here except that the USA government and media are pushing these "threats" to the extreme.

If you know some French you can try Le Monde, a major French newspaper. Since France was opposed to war it is likely that you will get a completely different prospective than that of BBC, CNN, NBC and other three letter acronyms.

Le Monde article If anyone has an english translation for this it would be good for non french readers.

I go to a number of sites for "news" news; I find that the "same" news is very different coming from different countries:
BBC News, which everyone's familiar with;
CNN, the epitome of US government-sanctioned news;
The Economist, of course;
The Times of London,
Japan Today,
Pravda,
The Beijing Review,
Le Monde, and
The Tehran Times

...and a couple of sites for tech and science news:
EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases,
the former, but still running, Hacker News Network,
BottomQuark,
the phenomenal journal Nature,
Science magazine,
and, of course, The Source.

Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know:
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and
Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.

And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.

It would be even better if they offered more stories from news sources arond the world. I've noticed in the past that if I read a story on CNN.com, and then go read it on El Mundo or Le Monde that you tend to get a very different point of view. Especially with stories that look at the United States or International issues. A real good example was the recent problems in Argentina and how the US news presented it, and how international news sources presented it.

Just to speak about Open Source, it has gained media coverage in France in two of the main newspapers (Libération and Le Monde - the latter raising the subject again today).

Europe is also lucky enough that the vast majority of press agencies/newspapers/etc are not owned by big greedy conglomerates and are therefore marketing independent. Economy biased media exist, but they are the minority here. The Diana hype has occured here too (hey, it happened in Paris, how could this be ignored), but the death of Mother Theresa, OTOH, hasn't gone unnoticed.

Marketing disease in the media is of particular worry because medias are a political force today. See the pedophilia "trend" (again in Europe), for example, which all started with the case of Marc Dutrou, in Belgium, several years ago. Raising this case led to 1. politicians looking at the problem and 2. people, aware or victims, starting to speak on public whereas they would remain silent prior to that. The media can influence people in the good way, like in this case, but the other way around is also true.

I just hope that this disease doesn't infect us, honestly. I just don't want to see presidential campaigns turning into commercials just like they are in the US.

<rant>

Speaking of news, I hope you US citizens know that Mr Bush refuses to adhere to the Global Court because he doesn't want his soldiers to be subject to its juridiction. Crimes are crimes, period. FYI the two other countries refusing to adhere are Russia and China. Nice refereces. This is a blatant insult to the rest of the world, as was his rebuttal of the Kyoto Treaty (need I say which country emits the more pollution in the world?). If not, then the rot in your media is not only about marketing.

</rant>

Just to speak about Open Source, it has gained media coverage in France in two of the main newspapers (Libération and Le Monde - the latter raising the subject again today).

Europe is also lucky enough that the vast majority of press agencies/newspapers/etc are not owned by big greedy conglomerates and are therefore marketing independent. Economy biased media exist, but they are the minority here. The Diana hype has occured here too (hey, it happened in Paris, how could this be ignored), but the death of Mother Theresa, OTOH, hasn't gone unnoticed.

Marketing disease in the media is of particular worry because medias are a political force today. See the pedophilia "trend" (again in Europe), for example, which all started with the case of Marc Dutrou, in Belgium, several years ago. Raising this case led to 1. politicians looking at the problem and 2. people, aware or victims, starting to speak on public whereas they would remain silent prior to that. The media can influence people in the good way, like in this case, but the other way around is also true.

I just hope that this disease doesn't infect us, honestly. I just don't want to see presidential campaigns turning into commercials just like they are in the US.

<rant>

Speaking of news, I hope you US citizens know that Mr Bush refuses to adhere to the Global Court because he doesn't want his soldiers to be subject to its juridiction. Crimes are crimes, period. FYI the two other countries refusing to adhere are Russia and China. Nice refereces. This is a blatant insult to the rest of the world, as was his rebuttal of the Kyoto Treaty (need I say which country emits the more pollution in the world?). If not, then the rot in your media is not only about marketing.

</rant>

I would post examples from The NYTimes, but they don't let you see previous issues of the paper online for free. However, as I recall their picks closely mirrored The Washington Post's:

The Washington Post
Top Story: Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
No. 2 Story: SEC Charges WorldCom With Fraud
No. 3 Story: U.S. Court Votes to Bar Pledge of Allegiance

The Los angeles Times
Top Story: 'Tweens: From Dolls to Thongs
One of the store mannequins wears a fringed denim skirt riding low on the hips and a top pushed high on the midriff. Another has shorts that roll down on the tummy and a one-shoulder top.
No. 2 Story: Pledge of Allegiance Violates Constitution, Court Declares
No. 3 Story: WorldCom Hit With Federal Fraud Lawsuit

The Los Angeles Times shows a consistent bias toward "Reader's Digest" type stories that are entertaining and give you something to gossip about but don't really tell you anything of value. I also get the sense that many LA Times reporters are really failed screenplay writers who can't let go of the need to create drama. However, they do occasionally print something worth reading.

The LA Times is owned by The Chicago Tribune , which puts even less original content on its Web site and is more "in-your-face" about pressuring you to subscribe.

I suspect Slashdot would link to The Wall Street Journal more often if the paper made more than 1% of its content available to non-paying subscribers. (I had a paid subscription to wsj.com for about a year, but I no longer do because it's just not worth that much to me.)

I'd like to read Le Monde , but the French refuse to publish an English version. Go figure.

All of Knight-Ridder's newspapers (The San Jose Mercury News , Miami Herald , Philadelphia Inquirer , et al) have been crippled by the "RealCities Network" which forces all of its sites to use the same content-poor, ad-rich design. The saddest story of the group is the SJMercury though, which has just fallen apart since the parent company began slashing costs and forcing the RealCities conformity on its once industry-leading site. The Miami Herald is an unofficial training school for future Washington Post reporters, but that doesn't matter if you can't find their content on the Web.

Slashdot doesn't link to the Financial Times often (ever?), though it's a great paper. It just doesn't turn out a lot of unique content that's of interest to most Slashdot readers.

Newspapers aside, Slashdot has linked to CNN and the BBC in the past, though not the CBC . ABC, CBS and NBC generally provide watered down news for people who don't like to read newspapers -- not Slashdot readers.

Slashdot often links to MSNBC , but I expect that will begin to decline -- MSNBC.com's founding editor (Merrill Brown, a former Washington Post reporter) recently announced that he's resigning after 6 years to pursue other, undisclosed "opportunities." The New York Times noted on June 12 (you'll have to pay for the archived version of the story) that he offhandedly mentioned that MSNBC.com is about to be swallowed by MSN for economic reasons. (In other words, Microsoft put its foot down and said financial concerns outweigh editorial concerns.)

The International Herald-Tribune writes some of its own content, but a lot of the paper is an amalgamation of New York Times and Washington Post stories.

I haven't read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Seattle Times in a while, but you may find some good technology stories there.

Bottom Line: Slashdot links to a disproportionate number of New York Times and Washington Post stories because both papers' sites post a lot of content and that content is top notch. It also helps that they're among the most recognizable names in journalism, but the Slashdot system is set up to allow editors to pick from the best stories that are submitted, regardless of the content provider's brand recognition. If you read a good story somewhere, submit it -- the quality of the story is more important than the misguided registration policies of the content provider. And if I've missed a good site people should be reading, reply to this message and let people know.

Belgian on-line media is also covering the events :

Le Soir (in french)
La Libre Belgique
De Standaard (in dutch).

Also in french :
Le Monde

-DZM

As said in some other posts, some startup tried to do the same : i2bp. VHS quality with sound in 2 kilobytes/s. This article gives a partial view on this.

Here is a short summary :

• Someone hire two or three students and ask them to work on this project (none of them are specialist of video compression). They are presented as "experts".
• He then announces that they have found some revolutionary compression format based first on MPEG-2, then on MPEG-4 and then on some fractal technology. This technology allow DVD quality on 2 KBytes/s then only VHS quality.
• He gives demo on a closed network to some journalist, without any mean to control. A public demo in flash is given on the site. Well, if we can call this a demo.
• He postpones the realease of the commercial product for some obscure patents (patents are pending on some countries, patents need to be updated, etc)
• He says that the developpers are somewhere in France with their bodyguard. Additionnaly, there is some story with the Mossad.
• He cancels a demo since many people think that their algorithm is inexistant. He says that this technology will be sold hundreds billion of dollars and say that Microsoft is interested.
• He talks about a player in Java which is only 50 bytes long. Yes. But, it could be optimized.

Translation for the French-impaired, with my notes in italics:

Computers will not be taxed, according to Catherine Tasca (the minister of Culture)

Read also "Catherine Tasca's proposal to tax computers embarasses Lionel Jospin"(the prime minister).

Updated Tuesday January 16, 2001

Catherine Tasca was forced Tuesday, under pressure from the prime minister's office and the economy and finance ministry, to distance herself from a tax on computers, less than 24 hours after calling for its creation. "The government does not tax computers and has no intention of doing so.", declared the minister of Culture to the National Assembly, after having pled to the contrary in an interview given to the newspaper Le Figaro.(conservative, Mrs. Tasca is a Socialist)

Mrs Tasca had explained that taxing decoders, enhanced VCRs and computers, in short any media capable of recording works is a logical next step after year-long negotiations within the Brun-Buisson commission on private copies.

This declaration caused an immediate outcry from the right-wing opposition who denounced the creation of a new tax and pointing at the risk of widening the "digital divide", according to Christian Estrosi (RPR). (a conservative party)

"Aberration", judged François Goulard (DL) (a centre-right party), as industry groups irked by the coming tax on blank CD, DVD and MiniDisc protested anew.

On the Left and in the government, the dominant impression was one of surprise. "Our jaws dropped", commented the prime minister's office and the finance ministry. Surprise was total, all the more since the subject had not been raised, according to government sources, during previous interministerial meetings.

joint article with Agence France Presse

This seems to be a publicity stunt from Mrs Tasca, who used to be Television commissionner, and thus more receptive to the arguments of producers, specially since in France the ministry of Culture (note the capital C) is hostage to well-organized special interest groups of publicly subsidized artists.

Just for a laugh, i'm going to post a "babelfished" article from "Le Monde" (the largest circulation French newspaper). Perhaps the viewpoint of an international source would be interesting. I made a few corrections in the name of readability, and if you doubt that the original link is: http://www.lemonde.fr/article /0, 2320,89273,00.html
and you can run it thru babelfish yourself and compare.

Here goes:

Gore counters Bush, a true choice

Updated Monday August 28 2000

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. The two principal candidates of the American presidential election of November 7, the republican George W Bush and the democrat Albert Gore, are, at the current moment, more or less equal in the surveys taken at the end of conventions of their respective parties; they both come out of it reinforced, more definite and more combative, ready for the long autumn stretch, which is the final playing field. In the two camps, one envisages a very tight election and no judicious political expert risks a forecast. For the voters, the landscape was cleared up considerably : they have in front of them a true choice. A choice, initially, between two men of the same generation, both sons of political leaders and of a centrist leaning but with the basically different personality. A choice, especially, between two visions of prosperity and of how to get there.

In Philadelphia, George W Bush, governor of Texas, made the republican convention swallow his " conservatism of the compassion " , a sort of human right which, while granting to richest a privileged role, does not want to leave anybody stranded.

In this vision, the role of the State inevitably is very limited since it is not him but the private sector which is at the origin of the longest cycle of growth of the American history ; in other words the private sector will make it possible not to neglect anybody, through the promotion of private teaching and the devotion of caritatives and religious works. All the aspiring members of the republican party were gelled together in Philadelphia to emphasize this message of optimism and fraternity ; the right wing faction was hidden and Mr. Bush succeeded in low presenting his plan of tax reductions like a plan favorable to the incomes, omitting to specify that it was definitely more favorable to the highest incomes.

George W. Bush proposes to devote a good part of the budget surplus, fruit of this prosperity of the Nineties, with tax cuts : it is the centre piece of its electoral device.

Another part of the "kitty" would be used to refund the national debt and to refinance the social security, of which a part would be privatized.

The vice-president Al Gore, intends to carry out tax cuts much more modest, whose principal recipients would be the incomes of the middle class, and to devote the major part of the budget surplus to the refunding of the national debt and the reform of social security. Mr. Gore is presented thus in the form of a guard of the budgetary policy of discipline which, since 1993, became the creed of the American Democratic Party and which it very largely contributed to benefit president Clinton. It is this policy, affirm the Democrats, who, while allowing to reduce the public loan, opened the way with the fall in the interest rates and supported the economic growth : to change policy would be likely to call into question all the dynamics of the current boom. The program that Al Gore envisages, in addition, has roles and appropriations more significant for the federal State than that of Mr. Bush, in particular in the areas of health and the environment.

Paradoxically, it is the candidate of the opposition, George W. Bush, who makes his campaign on the topic of prosperity ( " prosperity with a goal " , proclaims one of its slogans) whereas the candidate of the outgoing team, Al Gore, has all the evil of the world to capitalize on the eight last years expansion. In Los Angeles where the democratic convention was held , Al Gore even created a surprise while launching out in a populist flight on the topic " they are for the powerful ones, we are for the people " .

Can one reasonably make a left-wing speech in a country which is the middle of an unprecedented economic boom? Yes, answers Karlyn Bowman, of American Enterprise Institute, if the objective of Al Gore were to mobilize the democratic base, which showed lately worrying signs of undulation. Because a disenchantment of the democratic traditional voters presents a double danger to Mr. Gore : that of the abstention the day from the vote and that of a transfer of those voices to Ralph Nader, the candidate supported by the Green party whose campaign is against large corporations. Mr. Nader gathers for the moment only 2 % to 5 % of the possible voters, according to the States and surveys', but in such an open election, a hundred thousand voices can make the difference.

A CLEAN PROGRESSIVE

Al Gore must at the same time differ himself from George W Bush and leave the shadow of Bill Clinton. To counter the smooth and " light " image of the governor of Texas, he reintroduced policy into the debate, being presented in the form of a defender of the " hard hit families " . To come out from under the shadow of Bill Clinton, he refuses to be satisfied with this assessment of its two mandates and proposes to go further. (? -- dolanh)

For the moment, the strategy seems to pay : the increase of Al Gore in the surveys is striking in the female vote, which had deserted him these last months. But outside of these famous independent voters, are the moderates supposed to decide final victory ? Can they be allured by attacks against " the large oil companies, the giants of the tobacco and the pharmaceutical groups " ? All depends on the reading which one makes of the new tone of Al Gore. " the details count more than rhetoric , underlines a Democratic New-York banker . If Al Gore promised 400 billion dollars for such federal program, 400 billion for such other, one could worry, but it is not the case. It is its vision which counts, and it is a centrist vision. " Sociologist at the university of Boston and specialist in the middle class, Alan Wolfe also notes that in spite of the tone each word of the speech " was carefully calculated to stick to the ideas of the democratic Party. There was for example no criticism of globalization " : Mr. Gore even reaffirmed his support for free trade.

It remains to Gore to adjust this rhetoric not to give reason for " W ", who accuses him of again starting " the war of the classes " . Because the mood of the country hardly lends itself to it : " There are few indices, in the studies of opinion, of resentment with regard to the rich person " , notes Karlyn Bowman. With this nuance, introduced by Alan Wolfe : " What shocks people, it is that the money can buy the legislators through the financing of the campaigns. In other words, nobody has anything against the rich being rich, but people find it fundamentally unjust that they use their wealth to buy politicians. There is a real movement in favour of the reform of the financing of the election campaigns " - reform whose Al Gore promised to make a priority.

Other axis of the redefinition of Al Gore : the stress laid at the convention on morality and family values . Contrary to George W Bush, Al Gore had an exemplary youth, married and father of very young family, engaged in Vietnam in spite of his doubts. And contrary to Bill Clinton, he will not make a extraprofessionnel use of the oval Office. Didn't the Lewinski business thus form part of the past ? " It is interesting , note Alan Wolfe, that Republican convention hid the leaders of impeachment, whereas the Democrats left Joe Lieberman " , famous for his criticism of presidential control. That confirms the double assessment of this episode : the Americans rebelled against the inquisitor role of the process of impeachment , but they inevitably did not forgive Bill Clinton to have put them in the embarrassment. In the same way, Joe Lieberman, running mate of Mr. Gore, is a very religious man, which flatters the mood of the country, but it belongs to a minority religion, which draws aside the threat of interference of the religion in the public life. Savage partisan of the right to the abortion, the non-discrimination, the rights of homosexual and the separation of the Church and the State, Al Gore thus remains a progressive. But a clean progressive.

Sylvie Kauffmann

Le Monde dated *** TRANSLATION ENDS HERE *** du mardi 29 aoû t 2000

--sorry that the translation wasn't better, but my French is a bit rusty and Babelfish is even rustier :)

OK, now I'm a calmed down a bit, I can back my flamebait by facts (Tx Google).

Here is a link to Le Monde, the French reference paper (say the Times for England, or the Herald Tribune for the USA). All the facts about this bombing and who did it are HERE !

The site you'r linking to is very closely related to a political association who's preaching ultra-liberalism. They're too tainted to be trusted, nothing close to the widely recognized objectivity of Le Monde ("The World" if you can't speak French).

Peace.
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