[Marxism] French immigration minister angered by film defending "illegals" in France

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This highlights the intensifying campaign by the imperialist governments to
treat anti-racism, where Arabs are concerned, as anti-Semitism. 

Notice the idea that any comparison of anything that happens to Arabs or
Muslims today to anything that happened to the Jews in the 30s or during
World War II "crosses a red line."  Defense of Israel against the
Palestinian becomes the ideological spearhead of an attempted wider
rehabilitation of racism in the imperialist countries themselves. 

The imperialist boycott of the UN anti-racism conference as anti-Semitic
because it condemns Israel and Zionism as racist (which they are to the nth
degree, and more so every day) is perhaps the sharpest example.
Fred Feldman

Film Angers French Immigration Minister

Paris, Mar 10 (Prensa Latina) A film titled "Welcome" -about asylum seekers-
could well become the apple of discord between artists in France and the
government, following the comments against French immigration legislation,
compared with the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in 1943.

The movie, a panoramic over the punishment and conflicts suffered by Afghan
and Iraqi clandestine immigrants, in an attempt to immigrate to Great
Britain crossing the English Channel, is premiered on Wednesday in French
Cinema Halls under much polemic.

The filmmaker of the long-length film Philippe Loiret launches in the movie
a savage critic on the legislation of his country, according to which
whoever helps a clandestine person is punished with five years in prison.

"I feel like if we were hiding a Jew, as it happened in 1943", Loiret told
Lille La Voix du Nord paper, comparing the ordeal experienced by many
migrants in France and the plight of Jews during the Second World War.

The comparison angered French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who has
accused the director of "crossing a red line" in an effort to generate
publicity for the film.

The main star of the film Vincent Lindon said during the filming he could
see the inhabitants of Calais live in a state of Siege, with barbed wire
fences of five meters high stretched all along the coast.

Lindon expressed the riot police (CRS or Chevaliers Republicains de
Securite) is everywhere in Calais, in armored cars patrolling every five
minutes. People in Calais are sometimes treated like dogs, he added.

The migrants come from countries where life is already tough - places such
as Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and the Sudan. There is no state support for
them in Calais. It is against the law to help illegals there, making it
risky for humanitarian aid workers who provide the basic provisions of life.

ef gdb ft

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Havana, Cuba
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================
 



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