FRANCE IS BLOWING IT IN ITS NEOCOLONIALIST UNILATERAL ACTION IN AFRICA:

Just when it was reveling, downstage-center, as a marquee player in international discussions on Iraq, France has collided with an African crisis that may more cruelly mark out the limited character of its diplomatic and practical powers.

This reality bites: A French-engineered peace agreement meant to bring to calm to the Ivory Coast after a months-long rebellion – signed here with the trappings of inviolability over the weekend in the presence of President Jacques Chirac and a handy phalanx of plumed Gardes Republicaines – has imploded.

This article is damning. The French military force is called “invisible,” the word “neocolonialist” is used, and, most humiliating of all, it says that France was “outfoxed” in the diplomatic negotiations. The Ivory Coast, it suggests, indicates the limits of French power.

Check out the photo accompaning this article with signs calling Chirac a criminal and boosting the USA. And doesn’t it figure that the French have their own Republican Guard. . . .?