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Arch-Rival · 06-09-2004, 12:10 AM

More troublemaking from the Zeropeans:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...mit%20Notebook

Quote:

Fee upsets French, Germans at G-8 summit

By JOHN LEICESTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The G-8 summit is barely under way, and already the Europeans and the Americans are trading barbs.

French reporters, backed by French diplomats, have protested the $350 fee charged by summit organizers for use of press facilities at the main press center for the Sea Island summit in Georgia. The Germans also have complained.

For their money, reporters get a worktable, chair, light, use of printers and high speed Internet access in the main press room. Such facilities, excluding communication costs, cost nothing at previous summits and generally are provided without charge at other major events.

Barry Bennett, spokesman for organizers of the Sea Island summit that runs Tuesday through Thursday, said American taxpayers would be outraged if facilities at the press center in Savannah, Ga., were free. He insisted that $350 "is a very fair price."

"It's kind of a culture clash," said Bennett. "A U.S. reporter wouldn't accept a free gift from the government, yet the French demand it."

"There's no need to subsidize the press, and the American press would not regard it as ethical," he said.

The French presidential press corps wrote a letter of protest to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, and the French Embassy in Washington raised the issue with the White House, said a French diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for the German Embassy in Washington, who also refused to be identified by name, said she, too, complained to the White House because such fees are unprecedented at G-8 summits.

Bennett said organizers would not budge. They are losing money on the summit despite the $350 fees, he said. The food at the cafeteria at the press center, where reporters eat for free, is being paid for with private funding, he said.

"For 350 bucks you've got everything you need for a week, including food," he said. "By American standards, it's quite a bargain."

This is what you get with Euro-socialist, wacko, anti-American, freeloading elitists. In this country, you pay for most things, even upon death.

Down with the elitists!!!