The Stone leopard

Colin Forbes
PART ONE

December 8-December 16

`USA is Shackville..'

`This barbaric American civilization, this land of skyscrapers and hovels… In New York incredible wealth looks down from penthouses on incredible poverty and nothing ever lasts for even five minutes-least of all marriage in that land of divorcees…

`What a wonderful civilization this is-controlled by the cement lobby, the car lobby, the oil lobby. So, skyscrapers barely twenty years old are torn down to make way for even more hideous monoliths. Freeways and expressways spawn and roll across the plains-so these unhappy and neurotic people can drive on and on-from A to A to A! In the United States you never reach B- every new place you come to is the same as the place you have come from! And this is the America which attempts to dominate Europe!'

`Let me warn you, my friends. If Europe is not to become a second Shackville, then we must fight to cleanse her of all American influence…'

Extract from speech at Dijon on 7 December by Guy Florian, President of the Republic of France.