Your comments: North Korea and French immigration
We started off talking about North Korea's missile launch overnight. What do you think? Are you concerned? Or do you think that this is a senseless act of provocation from a weakened regime?
We started talking to Toe Hakata in Japan. She said that most Japanese found the launch very difficult to understand. Robert, who writes the blog, The Marmot's Hole, said that it was becoming hard to understand South Korea's 'easygoing' approach. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the missile is .
Yoshi, from Japan but now living in Manchester in the UK, said that his parents were not that concerned. They remembered the horrors of World War II. But he thought diplomatic options might have been exhausted.
We must try to weaken the North Korean regime or it won't end.
We had this text message from Jiao Di in China:
There is an understanding. There is the non proliferation treaty . North Korea has blatantly violated it , and expects the world to give in to its demands. What r we waiting for? Attack now !
Mark in Paris sent us this text message:
Given North Korea 's actions this week Mr . Bush 's "axis of evil " comment seems more correct than not . North Korea 's sham of a leader must be removed one way or another for the good of all humanity including those starving in it 's streets.
And this comment from Paolo Kinch in Berlin: "North Korea is a source of : future main war coming : slowly but surely."
And Hassan in London said that the US is looking for another pretext for war. "As long as Bush is in power, there's going to be more conflict. He's conflict trigger happy," Hassan said, adding that North Korea has the right to test fire missiles if it wants to.
Bill in Phitsanulok, Thailand sent this comment:
It's a tale of utter hypocrisy. The U.S. is fighting wars in two countries in West Asia as an occupying force. Its closest ally Israel is attacking a defenseless population. Let the 'international community' be concerned about that. Tiny North Korea threatens no one. It is attacking no one. I guess has not for decades.
Steve in Utah in the United States left us this audio comment about how the news networks in the US have covered the North Korea missile launch:
If you want to leave an audio comment, go here to read more.
French rallies around immigrant children
Next, we discussed a story about people in France who are sponsoring children that face deportation under new immigration laws.
Anne said that she decided to sponsor a few children because they were in her children's class at school. They took this family under their protection.
William took in a friend of eldest son. The family had not been able to renew their temporary residency permit. The father is Egyptian. The mother is Vietnamese. They took them to the central police station to try to renew their residency permit. If things look bad, they will take their children in. They took part in a civil sponsorship ceremony at their local town hall. They officially sponsored the children and the parents.
He said that he would do whatever it took to keep the children from having to leave France. "We will physically make sure that they will not have to get on a plane to go someplace that they do not want to go," he added.
Veronique Soule is the education reporter for the Liberation newspapers. Her newspaper launched a campaign to find people who sponsor these children to prevent their deportation. They published photos of the children. She called this a big movement, an interesting phenomenon in France.
She said that many people thought politics was in decline in France. They thought that the manyhad lost faith in politicians.
Serge, the director of the opera house in Lyon, took a special interest in the children. He put a lot of energy into helping find sponsors for the children because he felt it was important, both to him personally and also to French society.
But Michel felt that there must be some limits on immigration in France. He called it another example of political correctness in France.
For 20 to 30 years, there have been proposals to deal with mass immigration into our country. But opinion campaigns have destroyed these proposals even if they were moderate or reasonable.
He said that one only had to look at the riots. Michel criticised how we conducted the discussion, saying that he was the only person against the scheme that we had on the programme. He didn't think it was fair or that it reflected the reality in France.
But Rabiya said that we wanted to talk to some of the families sponsoring children in an attempt to understand why they are taking in children.
But Veronique felt that it was a problem of integration not immigration. She didn't want these children to feel like they are second class citizens, to feel alienated and feel that they had no voice but to riot as some people living in suburbs did last November.
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