Which one is closer to a democracy?

Which country is moving on, toward a better future? Which country is "under-developping", moving backwards?

You decide.

Iraq

Iraqi voters have probably approved a new U.S.-backed constitution, overcoming fierce Sunni Arab opposition in a vote Washington hopes will boost its beleaguered strategy in Iraq, results showed on Sunday. . .

"This is a very positive day for the Iraqi people and as well for world peace," U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters in Washington. "Democracies are peaceful countries."

or

France

Picture taken in free, daily 20 Minutes. Tee-shirt: "Enforcement of the law of commandeering"

Several thousands of people - 2,400 according to the police - have demonstrated on Saturday afternoon in Paris against "expensive rents and real estate speculation", answering the call of the organization for the right to housing [DAL: Droit Au Logement].

Around 3 PM, DAL's spokesman, Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, estimated that there were "around 10,000 and 15,000" demonstrators.

"It's a demonstration against expensive rents, real estate speculation and to support the end of this process of making a product of social housing," he explained to the AFP. . .

Among the demonstrators, the Human Rights League [LDH: Ligue des Droits de l'Homme], along with the Green [Party], and ATD Fourth World or Emmaüs, among others, were asking for housing to be a right guaranteed by the law: "we are demanding that the right to housing become a right others have to take into account," declared Jean-Marc Wasilewski, president of LDH Paris, to the AFP.

More scary, the DAL, whose slogan is "the right to housing for everyone, without discrimination", is also actively asking for a law to be enforced that would enable empty office buildings and appartments to be simply requisitioned to accomodate people, sometimes illegal aliens, living in "insalubrious" and "precarious" conditions, who don't have the financial means to rent a decent apartment in Paris or its suburbs and who have "no access" to housing projects.

The law in question: an ordinance from 1945 which would authorize the state, in case of a housing crisis, to requisition housing.

After the several fires in insalubrious buildings in which dozens of legal and illegal, immigrant families lived and sometimes died, this law is called on more loudly than ever.

On TV, a couple of weeks ago, they showed a man who had been offered what here we call a "social housing", an appartment in some kind of housing project. But he wasn't satisfied: with his 3 wives and 23 children, the apartment didn't suit his needs. So he was squatting an insalubrious building. What then? The requisition of an entire mansion for this man and his family only?

Of course, such a measure, even if temporary, would this time truly mean the beginning of the end for France, private property being seized to satisfy the need of some, the so-called right to housing swiping private property. But who really cares in France? Worse: who realizes the consequences? Not the members of the Green Party, much less of the different communist and trotskyist factions who, visibly and obviously, never volunteered to welcome the poor, homeless immigrants in the name of their "right to housing."

Make no mistake: those claims are not the matter of just a couple of people. Private property in France is seen more and more as a theft, especially when it's someone else's property. And the next presidential election is only 18 months away. Only time will tell, but the enforcement of such a measure could very well get the support it needs to at least be considered if not applied.