France 24 reported on July 1, 2013, in a news item headlined French parties call for Snowden political asylum, that the leaders of both the left-wing
Parti de Gauche and the the right-wing National Front, as well
as the leader of the Green Party, have all demanded that President François Hollande grant political asylum to whistleblower Edward Snowden without delay.
This must be the first time in recorded history that both the left and right wing parties in France have agreed on anything: most of the time they're biting each others' heads off. And the Greens are on board, too, for good measure.
As
right-wing leader Marine Le Pen said, "If we don’t give this man
political asylum, what use does political asylum serve?” And left-wing leader Jean-Juc Melanchon said, "It is not acceptable that we
allow a situation whereby he wanders
uncertainly around the planet. He is a defender of all our freedoms.”
The Green Party issued a statement that, "France must give this whistle blower and defender of freedom political asylum without delay.”
Of course, if France did
offer Snowden asylum, we'd probably go back to freedom fries and dumping
cases of Beaujolais down the sewers the way it was when President Jacques Chirac stood up
to George W. Bush and told him that France wouldn't join Bush's
British lapdog Tony Blair and participate in the illegal Cheney-Bush
invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In sad retrospect, we know that, unlike Bush and Cheney's coterie of ignorant neocon ideologues [see Jagoriade post dated March 21, 2013, "War Criminals Still at Large," below], Chirac actually understood the Middle East and got things right.
But it's doubtful that François Hollande has the guts that Chirac had.
