Capital: Paris
Area: 551 500 km²
Population: 59 900 000
Currency: 1 US$ = 0.9 Euro
GDP: 24 / 23 990$
HDI:   17 / 0.925
CPI  :  - / -

2002 data

There is so much to say about the history and genesis of France that I don't feel up to it right now.

As a Québécois, I have a love-hate relationship with the country whence Zacharie Cloustier, my first Québecker ancestor who crassed the Atlantic in 1635 (he was baptised in Mortagne, in Perche, Normandy in 1590).

Love, for I am naturally attached to the roots of my culture yet hate, because France abandonned our " 30 acres of snow" (Voltaire dixit), to the British in exchange for the sugar cane rich French Antilles.

Actually that negative feeling is closer to contempt for their shortsightedness. They even sold Louisiana for a pittance instead of developing it! Naturally my hindsight has 20/20 vision...

This being said, I must mention that the average Frenchman, like most Europeans, does make an effort to understand all the aspects of what is going on in the world instead of reducing the political and economic realities that affect our daily lives to the black and white caricature that fully satisfies the average American. The French see the world in shades of grey where Americans tend to see black and white, good and evil, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians etc.