Government bureaucracies screw things up, but to really screw things up takes la bureaucratie française.

ALGERIAN WWII HERO WINS PENSION, DIES 'DESTITUTE'

POITIERS, France, May 13 (AFP) - An Algerian veteran who fought for France in World War II was awarded 30 years' worth of pension arrears earlier this month, three months after dying destitute back home in Algeria.

Tahar Saim served with French forces in World War II and from 1975 was paid a pension of EUR 76 (USD 95) a month, compared with the EUR 427 (USD 540) paid to a French ex-serviceman.

On May 4 a court in the western French town of Poitiers ordered that he be paid the full amount, backdated to August 1975, and gave the authorities two months to comply.

"I had Tahar Saim's daughter on the telephone and she told me that he had died three months ago in Algeria in total poverty," lawyer Baghdad Hemaz told reporters Friday.

Our French correspondents assure us that minorities never get short shrift in France. Those would be our non-minority correspondents.

Bitterness reigns in Algeria, where residents interviewed by AFP say their veterans were victims exploited by France. One says the men were "used as cannon fodder and then abandoned once they were demobilized".

Enlistment in the armed forces was carried out in different ways in France's various colonies and territories, a fact that explains some of the lingering ill will. In Algeria, for example, men were drafted into service.

You can be sure this mec's pension will be properly administered.

Our French correspondents assure us that minorities never get short shrift in France. Those would be our non-minority

Damian, why don't you ask Monsieur Hamkaoui Mekachera , Secretary of French Veterans Affairs, yourself?

As for your crass insinuations of racism, it's always good to look first in your very own backyard before generalizing on some isolated case (there may be more) of a program that benefits to all veterans, even if it's not perfect.

M. Zmx,

There are no crass insinuations of racism.

There is a sad story of a minority veteran who France kept at the back of the line for 30 years. And there are explicit characterizations by minority veterans that France used them as "cannon fodder and then abandoned" them after demobilization.

Both of these stories reported in the French press. It's all quite straightforward. Nothing is insinuated here. There is nothing to infer.

Of course, once again, you set a different standard for yourself. You consider yourself competent to accuse America of a pertinacious racism, expecting Pave to quietly attend to your sneering lectures. Ah, but should France be caught out, oh, the tears! the outrage! the puffed up chest! the watering eye! And yet we have your word that you are not a hypocrite. How strange.

Regards.
DGB

Let me get this straight.. While France was mass murdering and exploiting the "dark skinned" colonial subjects throughout Africa as well as in Indochina, zoomer points out French acknowledgement of a black American war hero which was discriminated against.

Let's compare, the US military had segregated units in WWI. France on the other hand, drafted black soldiers from its colonial subjects to fight in WWII, while ruthlessly suppressing their remaining country men in their respective colonies, savagely murdering and raping hundreds of thousands in the process.

France pointing the finger at the US on the issue of racism and/or human rights abuses is like an old whore complaining about the infidelity of others