US lawmaker (Ron) Paul to meet French far-right (National Front) leader (Marine Le Pen)

[pampango]

Republican Representative and presidential hopeful Ron Paul aims to meet with the head of France's far-right National Front party, Marine Le Pen, during her upcoming US visit, his office said Wednesday.

Marine Le Pen is seen as a fresh new face for the anti-immigrant party founded by her father and erstwhile presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. The National Front's opponents have branded the party racist.

In mid-September, she said would travel to the United States in early November and hoped to meet key officials tied to the archconservative "Tea Party" movement to discuss the global economic crisis.

"There will be Republicans, I hope there will be Democrats, because I want to meet with everyone," she said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j_HdEchI2JOF3xSG00w3adi01xTg?docId=CNG.8893091bb42baeeb85dd89ded02beef0.c81

The National Front's new target is the oppressive power of global finance, and the mood she is tapping spreads across Europe. ... Le Pen is promising to pull France out of the euro, reinstate protectionist barriers, and reassert the state's supremacy over market forces.

According to a TNS-Sofres poll in September, 16 percent of the French have a favorable opinion of the National Front, with 76 percent taking a negative view. That's the party's best rating since 2007.

Nostalgia and identity are still core National Front concerns, but Le Pen has moved beyond immigration. The new Front rejects all the ideas that have driven European economic growth in the past two decades: globalization, free trade and the dominance of services and the financial industry.

"The real fault line is between nationalists and globalists, between economic patriots and those who believe that nations and borders must disappear and that there should be no obstacles whatsoever to commerce, that everything is for sale and everything can be bought, and that there should be no controls on the flows of capital, products and people," she says.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/us-europe-lepen-idUSTRE7960UA20111007

[xchrom]

1. well, that will be dull. nt