Unlike the British press, we at the Samizdata are keeping our eyes on what appears to be the increasingly deteriorating situation in France. Because, say what you like about France (and, let’s face it, who doesn’t?) but it is still a major and important country and also one that happens to be but 26 miles away from us.
If the stream of reports from Claire Berlinski (who lives in Paris) are anything to go by then that country is in the process of meltdown. I am not sure whether anything can or will be done to reverse or halt this process but at least this Frontpage Symposium may go some way to shedding light on the context of this disintegration:
France behaves more and more as if she does [sic] belong to the West anymore and as though she is the leader of the third world. Doing this, France has nothing to win, maybe just second-rate contracts and an ephemeral popularity among all the frustrated in the world. France will win only one thing, and for a short time, peace inside France: it will avoid riots among Muslims living in France now.
The opinions and prognoses range from melancholy to apocolyptic but this is still well worth reading because it is not just another familiar orgy of Anglospheric Frog-bashing; the symposium participants are all French.
[My thanks to reader ‘Rich’ for the link to the Frontpage article.]
I always thought France was in a continuous state of meltdown. The current situation is nothing new.
To some extent what ius happening in France is a vision of democracy as Perry would define it. People out on the streets demonstrating about what they want. I don’t often agree with their demonstrations although sometimes I have sympathy with their reasons. But France in meltdown? No – this is what France is like.
It is quite a vibrant society that takes politics seriously. Rather than write another useless letter to their government representatives they are up and out the door with their placards.
In this case of course some sympathy must be given to the French government trying to impose cuts in the state benefit system. Pensions are doing a nosedive as a result, a problem shared with the UK and most of the “western world”. Except in the UK we all accept it as inevitable and let the nice people in the pensions companies off with a “golden handshake”. Whereas in France they would prefer to give such people “golden showers” and are out on the street demanding the thieving bastards be strung up. Among other less useful things.
So on that point alone I applaud the French for taking to the streets. There are a lot of angry people who do not seem to be getting a voice elsewhere who find in this method a way of telling the government just how they feel.
Vive le differance!
Had a quick browse of the “Frontpage” web site and was most impressed by Mr Horowitz’s comments, viz;
“My friend, there is a Fifth Column in America, an enemy within.”
Oh goody. And we all know what “America” will do to its “enemies”. So much for the libertarian ideal that, “I might not support what you say but I will fight to the death to protect your right to say it.”
Watch out samizdatae, you can only link in so much misguided information before it begins to look like you agree with it. Of course I am supposing that right wing, neo conservative, statist nonsense is out of fashion in “our” neck of the woods. But old habits die hard.
Ne c’est pas?
We link to all sorts of people or are you suggesting we need some sort of ideological purity test before we link?
sick puppy,
If we were only to link to magazines or websites whose contents we approve of 100% then we would not able to link to any at all.
The symposium article has nothing to do with Mr.Horowitz or his opinions of ‘neo-conservatives’ (whoever they are). It is an interesting discussion about France conducted by some French commentators.
If you insist on seeing ‘agendas’ where none exist then that is entirely a matter for you.
What’s with your website’s tedious obsession with France? Why don’t you post extensively about Italy or Spain or Germany or whatever? And your apocalyptic posts are so wide of the mark I have to wonder whether any of you ever come here, speak the language at all, ever read the French press or even know any real live French people.
I live in Paris. No, France is not in meltdown, not even vaguely close. Yes, there are strikes and protests going on at the moment. This is France, for chrissakes. There are always strikes and protests going on. I think this is a pretty healthy response to government. When you disagree, complain loudly. If there are enough people complaining loudly, then the government tends to listen and maybe amend its plans. From the outside, it might look chaotic, but that’s how things work here. If only the English dissented a little more. There are so many crap things in the UK that the French wouldn’t tolerate for an instant. The appalling state of the railway network, for example. Or the fucked up plans for the tube. But no, mustn’t grumble.
Well, don’t expect a lot of support from libertarians when the strikes and protests are all about how the government should be taking more from the producers in society and giving it to the strikers and protestors. That may be just the French being French, but strikes and protests are fundamentally threatening and coercive ways to make your views known, and it should not be missed that the organizations behind the strikes and protests have, yet again, turned to actual violence against dissenters and opponents.
Not a lot to celebrate there, in my view. What we have is a group of people engaging in threats and actual violence in order to manipulate the government into taking more from other members of society and giving it to them. I don’t care how “vibrant” French politics is or how much “joie de vivre” the unions express as they beat, burn, and bomb their opponents, but the French way is not a road I care to take.
Becky,
Would you rather we ignored France? Does our interest not reflect the fact that France is an important country where important (and rather bad) things are happening?
The views expressed in the linked article are not ours but those of actual French people. I think we can safely assume that they have been to France and that they speak the language. It is their views that you seem to find objectionable not ours.
However, you do not appear to share their pessimism. Duly noted. Thank you for your input.
Regardless of whether these protests are just the “French” way or a sign of great sickness, the fact remains that the French pension system will bankrupt the country and no amout of soak the “rich ( producers) will cover its cost.
Soak the rich was tried in Britian before Thatcher. This led to the infamous brain drain and an economy that was headed toward third world status.
I have some sympathy with Becky and mad dog – direct action can be a kind of democracy …agreed.
But when what the French complain about and demonstrate for is made up of furious demands that they get more of something funded by the state taking money off someone else, then I’m less sympathetic.
Take Becky’s remark about things “…the French wouldn’t tolerate for an instant. The appalling state of the railway network, for example.” I’m afraid I do taste bile at the idea that a population “tolerates” how bad something is they are not prepared to pay more for with their own money, but should somehow be made better for their benefit by forcibly taking tax money from someone else.
The implication is clearly that in Becky’s terms, French protesters not “tolerating” a dreadful railway system are heroic, righteous torch-carriers for service-quality – as long as it’s mainly funded at other people’s expense, of course.
Becky and mad dog are right about another thing, France is unlikely to melt down. There is an old, sad economists’ saying about it being difficult to damage the French economy. With at least three times as much agriculturul product per person as Britain [twice the acres, and better acres with less bad soil and more hours of sunshine] France operates under much looser constraints than we do. France can and does repeatedly recover from theft, over-regulation, and rioters demanding that other sectors than their own be thieved from and over-regulated to fund what they believe is theirs by right.
T. Hartin wrote:
“… strikes and protests are fundamentally threatening and coercive ways to make your views known…”
What do you suggest? Writing to The Times? I don’t think withdrawing one’s labour is fundamentally coercive. If I want to make a point by refusing to work, and I’m ready to accept the consequences of that action, then I should be free to do so. Similarly with vocal protest. Or is your libertarianism about freedom for some people, and not for others? Violence is threatening and coercive and should be condemned. There was some violence yesterday in Paris, which looked to me like it was in part provoked by the CRS. But there have been many other demonstrations that have gone off peacefully.
For the record, I agree that there needs to be reform of the pensions, and I’m not especially supportive of the protesters in this instance. But I wouldn’t want to deny them their right to protest and stand up for what they believe in. What I was more concerned about was the apocalyptic tone of this post on France – to suggest that France is in some kind of meltdown because of a few strikes is really quite absurd. The author needs to go somewhere that’s *really* in meltdown to see the difference between a stable democracy that allows the right of protest and a country with no rule of law.
If I want to make a point by refusing to work, and I’m ready to accept the consequences of that action, then I should be free to do so.
Fair enough but – French teachers still get paid 70% of thier salary whilst they are on strike. I don’t equate that with accepting the consequences of their action.
Oh, T. Hartin – you are just s-o-o-o naif! It’s all in the nuance! You probably think that holding the rest of society (the productive side, at that) up to ransom (by not collecting the garbage in the heat of summer, say; and by not running the trains so the stations are jammed with abandoned people who have no idea how they’re going to get home) to punish the government is bully-boy tactics, not democracy. Well, I’m with you. Using your fellow citizens as a rod with which to frighten the government is not, as Becky thinks, “a pretty healthy response to government.” It’s brutish.
Becky, I find France very backward. They go through life looking at themselves in the rear view mirror, looking back to some imagined, misty glory. How many people do you know with an email address? Why are they still closing for two hours for lunch? Why is the electricity company state run and electricity criminally expensive? Why are all the stores closed on Sunday? Because the French don’t want to shop on Sunday, being such great family types and all gathering at granny’s for Sunday lunch? Really? Go across the border on a Sunday and see DIY stores and supermarket parking lots on the Spanish side jammed with French cars. Why is customer service an unkown concept? Why is it better to try not to hire people because, once hired, you cannot, by law get rid of them? Why don’t the French, in the memorable words of George Bush, have a word for entrepreneur? Why did a man from the garbage collection department knock on my door today to enquire about why I seldom put out my jaune poubelle (yellow wheelie, for plastics)? I mean, when they empty the garbage cans, they take notes for god’s sake?
France is not in economic meltdown for one reason: it is an export economy. They don’t import anything, no matter what the EU rules say. No French money leaves France. (Except in those supermarkets across the border, on Sundays.)
I’m struck by how this topic reflects upon last weekend’s discussion of that elusive creature, “European identity.” When the driving force between greater European integration is itself at a critical crossroads in terms of national identity, where does that leave Europe as a whole?
The beauty (and madness) of France has always been that it took its philosophers mighty seriously. Alongside German and British (ok, largely Scottish) thinkers, the French defined “westernness” and pushed the world onto a modern pathway. But the light has gone out in France. It is a victim (I would argue) of the trials of the sixties: defeat in Vietnam and Algeria, and the triumph back home of radical leftists. This double whammy left the defenders of progressive western values against the ropes, gasping for breath.
And yet, France took succor in the EU and the UN, where it somehow maintained the illusion of its prior vigor. France IS important, as David and Perry have argued repeatedly, not because it is powerful but because it is a hollowed out straw man at the heart of Europe. Ask yourselves who is inside this Trojan Horse? I suspect that France’s leaders know how grave the danger is, which explains their desperation to rush the process of integration. The question then is, could a unified Europe shake off this worrisome malaise, or would it bring everyone down?
Cheery thoughts, eh?
Becky
Have you actually read the Frontpage Symposium?
I wish this discussion would get wider circulation in the UK[ any newspaper editors around?] so that more people would understand exactly what it is Tony Blair wants us to become more integrated with.It would open a few eyes.
Kelli, That was a brilliant analysis! A hollowed out straw man as a Trojan horse … Yes. I, too, suspect that France’s leaders know how grave the danger is, which impels them to try to rush this ridiculous and unwanted (by anyone else) constitution through. They’ve got to try to get everything nailed down before all hell breaks loose. Personally, I think that France, although not in economic meltdown, is having a collective nervous breakdown as the real world becomes ever harder to deny.
David, Becky, others:
I wonder if you all noticed this almost throwaway line from Alain Madelin in the FrontPage symposium:
Already it’s very late: the positions adopted by the French government concerning the war upon Iraq were partly dictated by the fear of riots. In many French schools, professors have to skip the history of the shoah. (Emphasis mine)
Skip the history of the Shoah. That’s the Holocaust, for those who don’t know. The French Government is so scared of their Muslim minority they cannot teach their own recent past for fear of an uprising.
This should make me blindingly angry. I really can’t say why it instead provokes a deep existential sadness.
Becky:
I stand by my assertion that strikes and protests are fundamentally threatening and coercive ways to make your views known.
Strikes are fundamentally threatening and coercive because they go well beyond merely withholding your labor. They rely critically on intimidating or actually assaulting anyone who might be willing to do the job you are refusing to do. The purpose of picket lines is not merely to publicize, it is to intimidate. And surely you are not unaware of the “anti-scab” violence that breaks out in connection with many strikes.
Protests are a little different. I suppose that they have their beneficial uses, but really, no one is “persuaded” by a large group of people waving signs and chanting slogans. Protests are, literally, a show of strength, and have more to do with cementing group identity and intimidating opponents than they do with any kind of rational discourse.
In a dysfunctional society where the elites are not sufficiently accountable to the people they govern, protests may have a role, but I think they are more a symptom of a dysfunctional society than they are a sign of a a health society.
Surely, Becky, you cannot approve of the violence and threat of violence on display in France right now. Well, this violence has become an integral part of French political “discourse,” and is a sign of weakness, not strength.
As a Yank, we have to be concerned that our “vision” of France might be skewed in the same way that many in Europe are literally convinced that the US is now some sort of “police state” that is radically different than it was ten, twenty, and thirty years ago. The latter is, of course, preposterous, but it is shilled and believed by a great many Europeans, some very influential, who have a driving interest in making people believe what is a flat out lie, and a stupid one at that.
So let’s not make the same mistake in reverse vis a vis (sic) France.
But the reason that we bandy about terms like “meltdown” and “apocalypse” has to do with numbers, not the current round of standard French rioting. It is demographics and the obvious unwillingness of vast numbers of French to address the diparity between entitlements and production, this is what we are discussing in the end.
Mathematics care not one whit for morality, feelings, or ideology. Four minus Five will ALWAYS equal Negative One. Too bad if you don’t like it or prefer to ignore it. If your crop that is 20% apple trees are reproducing and 80% lemon trees are not, in short order you will have 40% apple trees, and 60% lemon trees… and falling. Too bad if you don’t like it, or prefer to ignore it.
Unless or until those numbers change, these concerns are totally valid in the end, regardless of what any of us say.
“So let’s not make the same mistake in reverse vis a vis (sic) France.”
Yes, good point. Always beware of hyperbole. I think you ought to tell those French people on the Frontpage symposium to just tone it down a bit.
have to agree that the bottem line is that France is going through a period of difficulty but then again which country in the world isnt. Certainly France can in no way yet be compared to either Germany or Japan and I think this Claire berlinski is first hand evidence of the danger of blogg reporters – she sounds like she’s just reporting what she wants to see and instapundit readers swallow it not knowing who she is or what her responsibilites are.
On the other hand she’s more reliable than Channel 4 Lindsey Hilsum – to me a truely shocking revelation
Heh.
It’ll be a cold day down below before I tell Jean-Francois Revel to tone it down. The man should be shouting from the rooftops, ‘specially since he agrees with me. 😉
I just don’t think today’s riots are the four horsemen arriving.
But who knows. We’ve all become familiar with that concept of “tipping point”. Maybe it’s a lot closer than we realize. As long as we keep a clear head about facts on the ground, something our ideolgical adversaries in Europe are, as I wrote, failing to do when discussing the US.
We all know who will come out ahead in the end. Maybe that reality, above all else, is responsible for the incandescant and irrational fury directed at Mr. Bush.
Shortly before reading this post, I saw an article on the BBC website titled UK ‘unsafe, dirty and anti-family’. Seems like things are tough all over (in socialist European countries).
Giles,
Yup, we Instapundit readers (especially the Yanks) take everything what the Prof says and publishes as gospel truth. No critical thinking involved. No checking sources.
You may not know it yet, but the Prof is a secret leader of a secret sect, which, for administrative reasons, is called “Anti-Idotarian Party”. Our secret plan is to take over the Universe. We also have a secret handshake.
David Carr,
Do you have better knowledge about France than those important Frenchmen, participants in the syposium ? On what exactely do you base that “tone down” advice? Maybe the situation calls for speaking out loudly, not for “tone down”.
The main problem disscussed at the symposium was the growing Arab minority, alienated culturally and economically. Also crime, wellfare, stagnation, diminishing population.
Those are grave problems, and probably not in France alone.
Jacob –
I’m assuming David Carr was being sarcastic, or better yet, droll, though he wasn’t all that clear about it.
“No checking sources.”?
How?
Jacob,
I was responding to Andrew’s plea to refrain from getting too shrill about France. He is quite right, of course. The picture may not be as black as has been painted. But if the people in the symposium are to be believed, then it is even worse than we imagined and they are all French!
By the way, I am horrified by yet another mass murder attack in Israel today. Keep safe.
Rioting is not practicing democratic government, ever. I personally do not care if France rebounds and becomes a great nation again or soils itself and implodes into a third world country. History suggests the latter rather than the former. While French thinkers may have contributed to the western ideal, France itself has contributed very little. French citizens are still vassals, but now vassals of the the state rather than the King. The French Revolution ended with in ‘the terror’ (and the country was saved from itself by the Italian dictator Bonaparte), because the French vassals were unable to govern themselves, they seemed to be too indulgent or undisciplined to rule. This bit of history is repeating itself.
While this does not bother me I do wonder what the Brits will do when France does collapse and the shit hits the fan. I know what I would do. I go down to the Channel and do a little frog giggin’.
To Becky & David Carr,
I think Becky has it right. People go down the streets to make their voice heard. I know this method looks absolutely exotic to Anglo-Saxon eyes where the tradition of standing collectively for workers’ rights is something lacking and vaguely considered detrimental to economy efficiency.
That’s all the difference between languid, resignated, isolated individuals & hoping, fighting groups.
I don’t approve af all demonstrators’ ideas or behaviours. I don’t think hostaging private workers who need to go to work is a very valid & effective way of gaining ground against the government. Nevertheless I’ll do anything to grant them the right to do so. Their right is mine too… Even if I won’t exercise it this time.
David: you’re evoking a French point of view. Fine. Just there are 60 million people in thus republic, so not everybody is a dangerous, stupid striker and not everybody is an aggressive, anticommunist right-winger. Most of the people do harbour more subtle feelings.
The protest over pensions can be described as follows. The population is growing old, the French have steadily postponed any serious reform & now they MUST do something. All right. PM Raffarin wants workers to retire later out of demographoc reasons. Why not indeed? But why just this solution??? We could also ask workers to pay A BIT more every month, COMBINED WITH taxing some financial transactions AND COMBINED WITH late retirement.
Why just PEOPLE should be required to sustain 100% of the effort to finance this century pensions? Why shouldn’t CORPORATE BODIES also be asked to get some euros out of their pockets. After all, if companies are performing well & winning new market shares, it’s not only thanks to computers, to sound financial mangement & to the Holly Spirit. It’s also thanks to commonpeople loyally & efficiently working to help corporations make profits.
It’s high time business served human beings, not the reverse.
Kodiak, You seem to be all over the place, but I’ll address a couple of your points. You appear to think that by generously granting public sector workers the right to hold the private sector to ransome by not letting their employees get to work, you are being somehow rational and libertarian rather than aiding and abetting criminal behaviour.
“It’s high time business served human beings, and not the reverse.” Business does serve human beings. When a business fails to offer human beings things they want, human beings fail to purchase its goods or services.
Finally, you seem to think that corporations should be funding insanely generous pensions for the public sector because the public sector is going bankrupt trying to stick to its obligations. Providing comfortable stipends for life for public sector employees retiring aged 50 is not the business of corporations; it’s the business of the two parties to the contract to agree upon, i.e., the unions and the government. It’s nothing to do with the private sector, which should not be expected, under any circumstances whatsoever, to bail out a government which pandered to the venality and laziness of the fonctionaires in return for votes.
REPLY TO FRANCOPHILE D2D
“Rioting is not practicing democratic government” >>> it sometimes is >>> look at US Revolution against the Brits >>> look at Venezuelans demanding Chavez back & urging local neocons to go back to the White House >>> look at Solidarnosc in Poland.
May be it’s easier to exercise “democratic government” when you’re watching biased TV & eating popcorn + pizza in full tranquillity & safety. But it’s not the case of all human beings on earth.
“implodes into a third world country” >>> do you need another drink???
“While French thinkers may have contributed to the western ideal, France itself has contributed very little” >>> thanx for the thinkers, scientists, politicians (NOT politicos), but they all had parents, husbnds or wives & children too >>> they were not living in separate cages.
“French citizens are still vassals, but now vassals of the the state rather than the King” >>> that’s a bit of a contradiction with respect to “Rioting is not practicing democratic government”, innit?
Well at least the French Republic doesn’t slump in vassalage to Bushist conception of brainwashing you probably indulge in.
“The French Revolution ended with in ‘the terror’ ” >>> that is right, at least to the extent that it was the 1rst Republic’end.
Then came the 2nd, 3rd, 4th & present-day 5th Republics.
So, you see, it’s not over yet.
“the Italian dictator Bonaparte” >>> if you had a glimpse of historical accuracy you’d have mention “the Genoese dictator Bonaparte” or “the Corsican dictator Bonaparte” for Corsica was bought by France to Genoa in 1768, just as France sold Louisiana to the USA.
Of course Bonaparte was French.
“because the French vassals were unable to govern themselves” >>> then why don’t you invade us & share your outsanding ideas with us; your brilliant articulacy shall certainly be of great interest.
I won’t be that ruthless to remind you what the UK has been owing to France since 1066, not to mention your language, a French dialect.
I appreciate provocative phrasing because I like fair verbal fight >>> it’s stimulating. So I’m not entirely against your stance.
Just your inability to express & connect “ideas” is revolting.
Merci pour tes remarques. Essaie de les étoffer davantage la prochaine fois que tu voudras te montrer spirituel.
Kodiak.
Dear Libert Belle,
Thanx for replying but I’ve got the sense my English is too poor to make myself understood or is it that you’re bit exaggerating or -more funny indeed!- caricaturing what I wrote?
1/ I said I’m against strikers hostaging (ransoming) non-strikers. So I do & did agree with you.
2/ “you are being somehow rational and libertarian rather than aiding and abetting criminal behaviour” >>> I’m flattered to be granted such inflated qualifying adjectives, but I don’t think striking is a “criminal behaviour”. Well, in France at least, striking is a RIGHT, written in black & white in the CONSTITUTION approved by the French people in 1958.
3/ “Business does serve human beings”. Not always. I don’t think Union Carbide served the interest of the Bhopalese as thousands got killed. The Pakistanese children working for Nike is somewhat questionable as to the benefits those children are gaining from scholl unattendance. I’m not too sure the sacked, duped employees of Enron were entertaining satisfactory feelings as far as senior management deeds got unveiled.
4/ “When a business fails to offer human beings things they want, human beings fail to purchase its goods or services” >>> please allow me, in turn, to label this sentence a sheer “rational and libertarian” -albeit partial, utilitarian, truncated- vision of reality. You’re approaching business contribution to satisfying people with a respctable (but undecisive) consumer-only awareness. The question was not “am I happy with what I can buy?” but “am I happy with my working conditions?” (pension policy being considered an element of working conditions).
5/ “Finally, you seem to think that corporations should be funding insanely generous pensions for the public sector because the public sector is going bankrupt trying to stick to its obligations”.
Waow???!!!…
“Insanely generous” >>> in literature, this kind of stylish confusion has a name I don’t know in English. Excuse my ignorance. Well the sought-after effect on the reader is rather obvious. But the meaning is poor out of inaccuracy. That’s not what I said anyway.
Why do you feel angry when you hear about taxing corporations? Are you allergic to human development? I didn’t mean taxing is stealing all the money from the cashier…
I won’t go through the entire length of your remarks >>> I don’t want to get people sick.
Just I find it sad you think “fonctionnaires” (civil servants) arte venale & lazy.
I am not too happy to pay to the State 1 month & 1/2 of the gross salary I earn every year. Sometimes I feel angry when I see poor productivity of the public sector.
But, at any rate, I’m OK with some public stuff we’ve got in France: highways, fast trains, top hospitals, school free for everyone, Social Security for everyone (free for the poor & granted even to illegal immigrants & criminals), Airbus, space adventure, culture everywhere, housing projects, financial aid for developing countries, a refreshing life expectancy, nuclear independence, & more stuff I even needn’t think of since they’re all existing & available.
This may be not the best solution for other countries, but it’s OK for mine.
Check yours first.
Kodiak – Somehow, I sensed a huffy Frenchman in your first posting and now it’s confirmed.
Frankly, I’ve always rather liked William of Normandy, and I think most Brits would gladly acknowledge our debt to Latin, via French. However, we were speaking our own language, which we still speak today, albeit with the glorious addition of a huge volume of French words, thousands of years before Guillaume hopped off the boat. But he had some great ideas and obviously, some dashing soldiers as many people on that side of the country still bear traces of Norman ancestry.
None of this has anything to do with the greedy and lazy French public sector, but as we’re off topic anyway, I really hate French food. Can’t you people learn to make a nice, spicy curry? I mean, you were in Pondicherry for a few years. Did no one think to bring a recipe home with them when we kicked your asses out?
Dear Kodiak, Thanks for not wanting to make people sick. The best way is to not serve them French food.
Kodiak’s views are presciently anticipated here.http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/06/AnotherletterfromFrance.shtml
Apologies for the poor link, I’m a bit technologically challenged.The link should be to USS Clueless stardate 20030607.1235 and is a letter from a resident of France “Adrian”.The address is http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/06/AnotherletterfromFrance.shtml
Liberty Belle, what’s with all this childish abuse of French food? I think it’s you that’s all over the place. I’m starting to wonder what the hell you’re doing in France, you seem to hate the place in such a personal, vindictive way. Stop whingeing and get out and enjoy Paris – there’s a great Nicolas Staël exhibition on at the Pompidou at the moment, get out and see it. And if you want a good curry, there are plenty of places to go in Paris. Go up to Rue Cail in the 10th for Sri Lankan fare or Passage Brady in the 10th for Pondicherry fare. If you like it really spicy, all you have to do is ask them.
As for your judging the health of a nation by the opening hours of its shops, that’s pretty feeble stuff. For God’s sake, I find the fact that all London pubs close at 11 pm desperately provincial, but I don’t take it as a sign that the UK is in meltdown.
Dear Liberty Belle,
I want to reassure you I either don’t like frog legs, snails & other lookalike delicacies. It’s not a question of taste >>> I never gave a try a relishing those most exquisite bits of gastronomy.
Why? Because I too find that disgusting.
I look in my drawers >>> no beret!!!
I look in my cupboard >>> no baguette!!!
I look in my bathroom >>> there’s a shower!!!
I look at my water bill >>> I’m ruined!!!
I look at my kitchen >>> no wine!!!
I look at my ancestry >>> my grandfathers were killed by the Germans as they were resisiting!!!
I look at my English-speaking friends >>> they all like me because I never betrayed them & because I don’t stink!!!
I look at this very post >>> I’m laughing because it’s ridiculous!!!
I’ll look if I cand find some “carry de Pondichéry” that’s all right for you.
Go, Liberty Belle! Your eloquence and patient reasoning make your opponents fluster and resort to feeble attempts at sarcasm and historical allusions (see Kodiak). He could have at least started with the modern history, going as far as 1066 smacks of an inferiority complex… 🙂
Becky, you accuse Liberty Belle of hating the place in such a personal, vindictive way. I must say I have not noticed any personal invectives on her part. She has consistently argued from a rational observer’s position. And she is entitled to her opinions without personal issues being brought into it.
It is you and Kodiak who resort to personalised arguments. So far I have not seen a valid argument to counter Liberty Belle’s opinions.
But by all means, keep trying…
Kodiak, thanks for your good humoured retort! I’m a little worried about a French person who doesn’t drink wine though …
ANSWER
TO
ANDREW X
Quoting you: “the obvious unwillingness of vast numbers of French to address the diparity between entitlements and production”.
I’m not too sure I fully appreciate the reach of, what you meant exactly (English is just my 3rd language).
HYPOTHESIS, SHEER GUESSWORK, CONJECTURE : you meant the French would like to get something they can’t aford no more.
Well I think you’re profoundly wrong. Yet you may be right in the short-term & also out of plain economical vindications. Underlying idea: the World’s got to be competitive, you can’t pay employees to much & too long if you wanna keep jobs where they are, it’s just glocalisation, you can’t just do what you want, it’s time you worked a little harder etc.
If you push that -apparently sound & actually suicidal- principle to the end, then once French companies are making more money while the French employees get exploited, sad & poor like the Romanians, it will be the turn of the Romanians to get as poor as the the Chinese, then the Chinese like Africans until they’re just a small number of the 6 or 7 billion human beings who can claim to be well-off.
AND THE REST OF HUMANITY?
Don’t you know that a 100% hedge pension fund system is a plague to wealthiness distribution around the globe?
WHY SHOULD THE CALIFORNIAN PENSIONERS BE GRANTED MORE RELEVANCE THAN ALL AFRICAN PEOPLE?
Quoting you: “If your crop that is 20% apple trees are reproducing and 80% lemon trees are not, in short order you will have 40% apple trees, and 60% lemon trees… and falling. Too bad if you don’t like it, or prefer to ignore it”.
Yes and so what?
And what about the the huge bit of your lifetime you spend rendering corporate interests more profitable as you do your work everyday?
Is it a satanic sin to dare think that those companies -the best assets of which are human intelligence & dedication they use on a daily base & pay for- could be gently invited to give up x% of financial transactions -IF ANY!!!- to contribute to the welfare state?????
NICE
TO
MEET
YOU
GABRIEL
SYME
As Frenchmen used to say in the battlefield: “A vous de tirer les premiers, Messieurs les Anglais”.
Accordingly I find it quite refreshing you resorted to the “inferiority complex” phrase without being stimulated to do so. Don’t psychologists call this phenonemon “deflection”?
More importantly:
1/ “She (Liberty Belle) has consistently argued from a rational observer’s position”
Although I wouldn’t lack respect to Liberty B., I’m positive she was just performing verbal (verbose?) harassment although I’m not against logorrhea at all >>> it can be fruitful.
Still Gabriel, you’re caught the hand in the bag.
2/ “It is you and Kodiak who resort to personalised arguments. So far I have not seen a valid argument to counter Liberty Belle’s opinions. But by all means, keep trying…”.
I understand you like to expectorate sententious, wanton, carefully constructed words of wisdom. May be some sort of ideas of your own would have a greater impact on our disabled, limited brains…
But sweetie, if you need a public court for you to radiate your well-thought-out views about what you haven’t got a clue of, I suggest you first take lessons in theatrical science & buy some tips about how being quick & wit at repartee.
Sans rancune, aucune.
Kodiak.
“It’s high time business served human beings”
Yes quite right. It’s time that business stopped catering for aliens and the animal kingdom and started to produce things for human beings instead!!
Dear Kelli,
First accept my humble, appreciatory tribute to your sharp-sighted interest about French internal affairs.
True it is that Liberty Belle’s spontaneous approving of your “brilliant analysis” was also quite decisive as I elaborated an opinion about your precious, reasoning aid.
1/ “The beauty (and madness) of France has always been that it took its philosophers mighty seriously”.
Don’t you know that France has no philosopher at all and that French people are not serious?
2/ “It (France) is a victim (I would argue) of the trials of the sixties: defeat in Vietnam and Algeria, and the triumph back home of radical leftists”.
Don’t watch French TVs too much!!!
Do you know any real-life Frog?
3/ “And yet, France took succour in the EU and the UN, where it somehow maintained the illusion of its prior vigour”.
Do you really think the French are wasting their time scrutinising what’s going on in the UN on an ever-lasting base???
Do you know there is also industry, services, agriculture, sports, intellectual life, culture & fight in Gaul?
4/ “I suspect that France’s leaders know how grave the danger is”.
Hey sweetheart, I’m so afraid and I’m not able to anticipate. Would you be so kind and tell me which danger you’re talking about?
If I am to disappear, I’d like to know when & how, & also have the opportunity to say good-bye to my friends.
Thanx for your comforting help.
ARE YOU BEING THE NEW HIMALAYA OF THE THINKING OR IS JUST THAT YOU ARE DELIVERING THE MOST FARCICAL HOAX EVER???
ARE YOU PLANNING A EURO-LIKE REMAKE OF “THE EXORCIST” OR DO YOU NEED A BIG HUG FROM A FRIENDLY FROG???
Kodiak, with love from impoverished, stabbing-in-the-back, Muslimified, anti-Semitic, arrogant, stinking, peace-threatening, inadapted, Anglophobe, monkey-like France…
Mes amis francophones (Anglais ou autres >>> je ne suis pas raciste), les auteurs de ces diatribes vaguement intellectualisantes sont bons pour le psy.
Becky, Thanks, but much as I love Sri Lankan food, that 3 1/2 hour each way trip on the TGV kind of takes the edge off the appetite. So school ma’arming me to “get out and enjoy Paris!” was a rather provincial enjoinder.
Gabriel – 1066 is all they’ve got in regards to us. They do harp on. No one has ever denied that French has enriched our language immeasurably to help make this glorious melange (Fr word), which includes our original Old English and other Teutonic languages, Celtic, Greek, words from our former colonies and anything else that we came across and liked, the most popular language in the world and one that everybody wants to speak. Unlike some languages I would not be so heartless as to name.
Kodiak – Are you so immunised against reality that you do not realise that corporations pay unfair taxes already and corporate taxes, along with income tax, are the engine of the welfare state? Are you suggesting that if the government mismanages the economy – and most governments do – that boards of directors of corporations and shareholders should be fined?
“Making your voice heard in the street” via riots, demonstrations, and strikes is profoundly undemocratic and always has been. It is only acceptable when society is so profoundly dysfunctional that no other channels exist. Thus, it was acceptable for teh AMericans to do so in 1776 because they had no voice in their government, despite repeated petitions to King and Parliament.
If a bunch of employees from a competitor’s shop set up a picket line in front of your business and harassed, threatened, and even assaulted your customers so they would go to the competitor’s shop instead, you would not think of that as a legitimate expression of their political views or even as fair competition. That is, however, exactly what a labor strike is. Strikes are not just about refusing to do your job as a negotiating tactic; they are about refusing to let others do your job, or their job, or even refusing to let the business operate. It all rests firmly on a foundation of coercion, and would be quite illegal without the special allowances made for labor “actions.”
Demonstrations are also not about communicating or discussing ideas. Very few ideas get expressed in demonstrations, and few conversations are had. Demonstrations are about intimidation and reinforcing group identity. The former, anyway, has no place in rational discourse.
Hi T. Hartin,
1/ “”Making your voice heard in the street” via riots, demonstrations, and strikes is profoundly undemocratic and always has been” >>> again , again, again, again & again & again, THIS IS A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT IN FRANCE. You may not like it nor want it nor face it, but there’s nothing you can change about that.
2/ “If a bunch of employees from a competitor’s shop set up a picket line in front of your business and harassed, threatened, and even assaulted your customers so they would go to the competitor’s shop instead, you would not think of that as a legitimate expression of their political views or even as fair competition” >>> SO YOU THINK THE ANTIGLOBALISATION (OR ANTIWAR) UNITEDSTATISH PROTESTERS IN SEATTLE (OR IN FRISCO) WERE RIGHTLY REPRESSED BY THE DEMOCRATIC BLACK-UNIFORMED POLICE OF THE LENIENT GEORGE BUSH THE SECOND?
3/ I’m so happy to have the opportunity of reading your insight knowledge about tactics in negotiating & contemporary French social movement history.
My boy, even the French PM Raffarin (ie: opposing the strikes) would laugh at the poverty of your unconvincing explanatory attempt.
Thanx anyway.
Kodiak
My unsurpassable Liberty Belle,
“Are you so immunised against reality that you” never took the pain to investigate just a bit further than your nose is actually reaching & try to find out what’s wrong with corporate governance as it is currently running?
Do you, know the meaning of corruption, concussion & prevarication?
Do you like life as such (including the sad depressing ones pertaining to the overwhelming majority of those human fellows starving to death, if not poisoned by water or taken away by evitable diseases or living crappy life out of analphabetism or lack of (small) money) ?
Call me Utopian too >>> I won’t feel insulted.
(Socialist, communist, naïve, stupid etc will do too).
Kodiak
” SO YOU THINK THE ANTIGLOBALISATION (OR ANTIWAR) UNITEDSTATISH PROTESTERS IN SEATTLE (OR IN FRISCO) WERE RIGHTLY REPRESSED BY THE DEMOCRATIC BLACK-UNIFORMED POLICE OF THE LENIENT GEORGE BUSH THE SECOND?”
Yes yes yes Bush is Hitler!!! USA is Nazis!
As a matter of fact since the anti-everything protestors you seem to admire werte intent on smashing property, looting shops and and general intimidation then, yes, those ‘black-shirted’ policemen were quite right to repress them.
Kodiak, you have disappointed me. I thought that you were going to at least attempt to dispel some of our notions about the idiocy of the French public. Instead you have managed to confirm and reinforce every single one of them.
T. Hartin, you’re conflating two intertwining, yet separate issues: the right to strike and picketing. I’m broadly in favour of the former, broadly opposed to the latter. Over the past week in Paris, the metro has been working at about 50 percent its normal capacity. That suggests to me that some drivers have decided to strike, and that some have decided to work, and that no one is stopping them doing so. In fact I know this to be the case, because I talked to some drivers on my line the other day.
Surely, as a libertarian, you are in favour of people being able to work if they want to, and withdraw their labour if they don’t? Or are you a closet authoritarian? As for demonstrating on the street, sure, I’ll accept that it can be a pretty limited way of protesting, maybe even counterproductive at times. But would you actually want laws against it? What kind of libertarian are you?
Cher David Carr,
“Passer pour un idiot aux yeux d’un imbécile est une volupté de fin gourmet”.
Courteline.
En anglais:
“Being considered a twat by the next idiot is sensual delight for the accomplished connoisseur”.
Courteline.
SANS RANCUNE, AUCUNE.
Kodiak
“But would you actually want laws against it? What kind of libertarian are you?”
I think that T.Hartin is the kind of libertarian who believes that free trade, free association and property rights are more important than intimidatory displays of political agitation.
In other words, he is a real libertarian and not merely a socialist trying to pass off as one.
Becky, please try to get this through your head: everybody has the right to walk away from their job if they want to but nobody has the right to demand (with menaces) that others do likewise.
Kodiak,
Keep going. You’re doing a great job.
Kodiak,
Thanks for the pugnacious, oh so French (e.g. belated and bizarro) diatribe. I was beginning to wonder why Liberty Belle got all the really good full-frontal personal attacks.
You ask if I know any Froggies, to which I answer, yes but none of them are close friends. The guy who works in the wine shop, etc. Does it really matter? I have been to France, studied French, cooked the food and (in pre-boycott days) enjoyed the wine. More to the point, I am a fully paid up professionally trained historian of modern Europe, so I’m not really talking out of my ass in the earlier posting–or, if I am, so are most of the other academics out there (a distinct possibility).
Please explain the tv and movie remark, I’d love to get a peak into your viewing habits.
I thought my comments about French culture and history fairly balanced, but apparently if you cannot shout praise for all of France’s immense achievements from the rooftops, you should remain silent.
Finally–and not incidentally–please refrain from using a distinctly AMERICAN pseudonym. It conjures images of bears and stunningly beautiful wilderness–perhaps too beefy and masculine to suit your no-doubt lithe and continental self.
Surely, as a libertarian, you are in favour of people being able to work if they want to, and withdraw their labour if they don’t?
Why certainly. Provided, of course, employers are free to fire anyone who elects to withdraw his labor, and replace him with anyone they choose, union member or not.
Kodiak,
The difference between the American War of Independence and the French Revolution is that those riots were against tryannies. The riots taking place in France today are not trying to shake off tryanny. It is somewhat in reverse, the unions are dictating to the government and people the future of France. This would not be so bad if 25% of the French work force were not government emoployees, as it is France cannot function without the unions. Talk about being held hostage, jeez.
The French government probably knows the real extent of the danger that the petition system has on the French economy, but know one wants to neither hear really bad knews nor sacrifice and take a communal bite of the shit sandwich for the good of France. What people don’t know, or willfully choose not to know, about their economy can hurt them. And if the economy fails the people hurt worst are on the bottom because they do not have diversified multi-national stock portfolio, and they will revolt. It happens every time. We can only hope that if and/or when civil war comes to France that it does not become a wider war in Europe.
One major difference between the American War of Independence and French Revolution is that the war and its aftermath in the U.S. was led by educated men who understood commerce, law, philosohy, and economics. The French Revolution and the aftermath was mob rule (sound familiar). And they executed their educated class leaving themselves unable to govern.
A serf or vassal owed his livelihood to the king or his lord, who at the time was the government. While not a free existence it did offer security, especially job security. He was and is dependent upon the government for damn near everything. I believe this is what makes facism and socialism so appealing to Europeans. The vassals that seized France in the Revolution wanted to be free of that system, but had no idea how to be free, so they just went nuts. It’s really hard to tell if a lot of Europeans are truly comfortable with self-determination and freedom.
Corsican, Italian, Sardinian, the point is Bonaparte was not French.
Finally there is one reason that the U.S. hasn’t become a true empire. That is when you invade a country to get it’s riches you also get its problems. And let’s face it France right now is damn near psychotic. So no thank you for the offer of allowing us to invade, but I think will just wait until the 6th Revoution is over and see what happens. And after 6 revoutions let’s hope that France can get it right for chrissakes.
make that pension systems, sheesh
To angry Kelly,
I truely apologise if I’ve been rude with you.
I’m not THAT interested in your FROGLIFE credentials nor am I in your academic striking achievements.
The TV remark is just a possible parallel -albeit an ackward one, I reckon- between your putative FoxTV-gazing habits in the US & similar ones with French-speaking channels.
I’ve no TV >>> I’m sorry >>> I’m too poor a Frenchman.
But I very much like the last point about Kodiak.
Except, dear, this bear also comes from Kamtchatka & broadly speaking Far East Siberia.
You’re so self-centered or paranoid enough to think I could dare use a Unitedstatish pseudo to bark my hate of capitalism, stab George Bush in the back, insult the poor, innocent, elevated, antiracist people of the USA ???
Sans rancune, aucune.
Kodiak.
D2D – Good post, but BTW, the French public sector is not 25% of the workforce, but one-third. And, of course, they vote en masse, which makes it almost impossible for anyone else to get a fair shake at getting elected.
Kodiak: golly. I get the feeling that if I plugged all that into babelfish, I’d get “You don’t frighten us, pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you! I don’t wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!” as the translation.
Dear D2D,
I haven’t got much time left to issue the appropriate reply to the most contributive mentally- constructed output I was ever addressed, AND the edifying conclusions of which you nearly spit on the post above.
OK Bonaparte is not French & I’m Queen Elizabeth, and maybe after all you’re right. YOU are Bonaparte. Please call an ambulance to ship D2D to the next pyschiatric hospital.
Yes you’re right: the French are stupid pigs while all the Unitedstatish people do embody the quintessence of God & grace & refineness e tutti quanti. Sorry to exist. I’ll try to do my best next time.
The French government is surely a sissy afraid of the strikers just like the French government was eating cheese, surrending & aping like a monkey in 1940. Thanx very much for giving us a precious hint of how to do to become more adult, efficient, serious like the US. Goes without saying we’d love to be loved by the whole World just as Unitedstatish are.
Please accept my apologies: I’ll look into your mental disorder later ASAP.
Rest assured I’ll come back to you to contradict, should I happen not to be censored in the meantime.
Sans rancune, aucune.
Kodiak.
59 comments! Is this a new record….
Kodiak,
Man, get a hold of yourself. Your national pyschosis is showing.
S. Weasel, priceless! Thank you for a welcome shred of sense in the heap of Gallic pomposity and something else, a certain ‘je nais ce quois’.
Gaw’d bless, Monthy Python. They knew what that spake of… Aargh, it’s infectious!!!
A few more hysterical diatribes by Kodiak and I shall rally the Dissident Frogman!
One more things: I understand you like to expectorate sententious, wanton, carefully constructed words of wisdom. May be some sort of ideas of your own would have a greater impact on our disabled, limited brains… But sweetie, if you need a public court for you to radiate your well-thought-out views about what you haven’t got a clue of, I suggest you first take lessons in theatrical science & buy some tips about how being quick & wit at repartee.
I don’t need to. I have a blog!
Kodiak, please refrain from personal insults, you are welcome to share your arguments with us, but if your offensive language persists, you will not be welcome here anymore. Insulting me or anyone else is not going to help your arguments.
Kodiak –
Well, I admire your persistence 😉
Just to answer a couple points you made on me…
The foundation of my thoughts are mathematical. Your philosophies of wealth distribution I disagree with, but setting that aside, the simple fact is that goods and services must be paid for, no matter where they come from or who they go to. If the French govt, through pensions and the like are providing one million francs worth of G & S, and the economy is producing 900,000 francs worth of wealth that can be allocated towards it, eventually those numbers will lead to a crash of some sort. If the state continues to take more and more of overall production to that end, we see time and time again that overall production will plummet. The numbers just won’t add up.
Regarding apple and lemon trees, my entire point is that your follow-on to that is utterly irrelevant.
“And what about the huge bit of your lifetime you spend rendering corporate interests more profitable as you do your work everyday?”
WHO CARES? This is meaningless to the discussion. If 20% of your total crop (population) that is apple trees (Muslim, many who care not one whit about “being French”) are reproducing (and immigrating in), and the 80% of your crop (population) that are lemon trees (non-Muslim, basically French) are NOT reproducing to that 2.1 replacement level (and some are leaving), this is math. There is no way around an inevitable wrenching change for France into…. something else, currently undefined. My entire point is that we can bloviate and philophise all we want. This is math, and math don’t give a damn.
And by the way, thanks for proving my point about many Europeans being utterly clueless about the US. Those jackbooted “blackshirts of George the Second” in Seattle? OK, little clue for you. Not one of them was Federal. They are the “jackbooted thugs of Gary Locke, the Democratic Asian-American governor of Washington state, and possibly they were not even his, but rather local forces from Seattle and it’s suburbs. It is their job by the way, to protect Seattle from nitwitted anarchists who worship destruction above all (boy, it’s fun and feels good!) and could not build or produce their way out of a paper bag. (And wasn’t that meeting in the Clinton era anyway?? Not sure, but I think it was). Either way, George W. had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.
But of course, those who worship at the alter of the almighty state just cannot grasp the genuine and constitutionally limited powers of the President of the United States. Everything seems so much easier to just lay at his feet. It’s a lie of course, but since when is truth relevant in statist philosophy? Certainly not in my lifetime.
Dear Gabriel,
I’m not impressed.
You won’t have contradiction >>> your problem.
You indulge in merely giving good grades & bad grades to previous contradictors that took the pain to develop arguments >>> fair enough as long as you enjoy.
You threaten to employ censorship >>> your problem again.
My language may seem offensive to your purring tranquillity. Yet your unconstructive & unfair attitude IS really offensive.
Not offensive to me.
Offensive to yourself.
Kodiak.
Mr Sans rancune, aucune.
Could you please tell us your opinion about the main topic of the symposium that started this blog theme: the menace of the growing, unassimilated, extremist Arab minority in France ?
The same problem probably exists in other countries too, but what do you think of it, considering your experieance in France ?
Hi Andrew X,
1/ I agree with you with the accountantish-inspired, balancing-like approach about how to finance the future, including pensions & stuff.
You’re right, when you’ve got no money in your pocket, you can’t by anything unless anyone wants to be your creditor or wants to do you good.
2/ “Regarding apple and lemon trees, my entire point is that your follow-on to that is utterly irrelevant” >>> that might well be possible for I’m not sure I got the point you examplified.
3/ “Muslim, many who care not one whit about “being French””.
How can you be so assertive?
Do you know their feelings?
Did you know that many Muslims wanted to be French in the past (1830 – 1914 – 1939 – 1962 – and from 1975 on)?
4/ “and the 80% of your crop (population) that are lemon trees (non-Muslim, basically French) are NOT reproducing to that 2.1 replacement level (and some are leaving), this is math”
Ok now I understand my mistake.
I thought you were speaking about ecoomics & how to balance a budget.
You actuallly focus on race rather than citizenship and you consider the French people a mere herd of cows or sheep or whatever.
I feel sad for you.
Anyway, I don’t mind if in 2050 or 2100 all the French are atheist, agnostic, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Sefarad, Achkenaze, Bouddhist, Taoist, Animist or whatever. I reckon the France of 2050 will roughly be the same as present-day France, at least as far as core values are concerned.
5/ I don’t worship the State as such.
But I accord much significance to what our Latin fathers called Res Publica (Public Matters) and that we French call République.
Beyond the concept, there’s everyday down-to-earth application: school, health, help e tutti quanti.
6/ I still dunno why you’re so aggressive towards this tiny wart at the façade of Europe you call the coward & retarded France…
Have you got anything you wish to pay back???
Is your conscience clear???
Just nuke France & it’s gonna be all right for you.
Kodiak.
Dear Jacob,
Plainly speaking, I think the fantasmagoric spook you evoke as “the menace of the growing, unassimilated, extremist Arab minority in France” doesn’t exist at all.
I know that poverty, ignorance, injustice & indifference are the real menace in France, in Europe, in the Arab world, in Israel, in China, in the USA & everywhere on Earth.
Kodiak.
Andrew X – Because European socialists are trained to think of government as being naturally centrist, they cannot encompass the fact that each one of the 50 states of the United States has more power and independence than has any formerly free European country which is now a vassal of Brussels. Because they have been trained to expect “the state” to take every single decision in their lives, they simply do not understand that America is a confederation of 50 states which are independent to a large degree (not as independent as some would like, of course, but still …) and free to make their own laws. They don’t want to believe it. They don’t want to be confronted with what they’ve given up. They’d rather believe George Bush involves himself in health issues Tacoma and education and policing in Dime Box, TX and, probably, speed limits in downtown Oklahoma City. That’s all they know.
They accuse the Americans of being provincial, but Europeans are the most ethnocentric people on earth. They sincerely believe the world revolves around Europe. They can’t see that Europe is being sidelined, even as we write, by more successful and vigourous economies elsewhere. France gets increasingly shrill and desperate. I said in an earlier post that although the country is not in economic meltdown, I do believe it is undergoing a collective nervous breakdown. This will become more apparent over the next few months.
No, Kodiak, contradiction (you probably meant disagreement) is fine. What we don’t tolerate on this blog is personal invectives.
There is no need for them in a rational argument so your ‘censorship’ accusation is missing the point. And any case, your diatribes are amusing. You never know, you might end up with a cult following, just like the old Iraqi Minister of Information!
On the other hand you may be a fake, pretending to be this raving Kodiak character to get a rise from us. Your French betrays you since you seem to be using tutoyer rather inappropriately for a public discourse.
To quote you – I am not impressed.
Dear Liberty Belle,
I regret that the stimulating intellectual agility you displayed before has now vanished somewhere in the muddy meanders of Europhobia (a variant of Francophobia?).
I’m enchanted to learn that Texans enjoy more freedom than, say, Spaniards but I’m still curious to know what Texas has brought to humanity.
It’s a well-known fact that all Europeans are begging their States for ridiculous crumbles of wealth & that they never accomplished simply deserving mention.
Gabriel permitting, I think you are either envious or jealous or just ignorant about Europe.
I just wonder why Ben Laden didn’t simply snatch the European rotten fruit instead of attacking the noble, vigourous, invincible USA? Ben Laden brainwashed puppets were armed, shall I remind you all, with 6 forks & 3 knives…
Good luck.
Kodiak.
From a letter sent from France to an American blogger:
“The city of Toulouse was blocked during the morning of yesterday and not a single step was taken by public authorities to end this blocking. On the contrary, the police collaborated with the unions in order to make sure that people could not pass. In the demonstration I just mentioned, not a policeman was dispatched to protect us against the assaults of the communist union’s members.”
Yes, were so jealous of the ‘good life’ in France.
Dear David,
“to protect us against the assaults of the communist union’s members”.
Are you “us”?
What would you qualify an “assault”?
Are you allergic to “communists”?
Are “unions’ members” all necessarily “communist”?
Do you want to “help” France?
I think you should first have a look to your NHS system.
NHS: great UK achievement.
Combining:
1/ soviet-style health care delivery (you can die 10 times before you get a pill or an appointment with Tovaritch Doctor
2/ Unitedstatish-style health care financing (live as you pay, die as you can’t).
Sans rancune, aucune.
Kodiak.
Gabriel,
Be fair. “Kodiak” may be on the peevish side, but he is a scrappy and engaging interlocutor. It would be a shame to sideline him. But as for his Frenchness, I admit to having suspicions as well.
Kodiak, can you prove your bona fides? Maybe give us the third verse of the Marsaillaise?
Well, anyone who has the time to post so many messages either has no job or works a mere 35 hours a week. What’s more French than that?
Perhaps I am wrong and Kodiak is on his way right now to volunteer his services on behalf of the brave French forces bringing peace to the Congo. If so, good on him. Those guys have cojones.
Oh, and as for Texas’ contribution to the world, I’d have to say that “Gunsmoke” and “Dallas” have given more pleasure than all the state-subsidized Gallic media productions of the past half century. On a more serious note, France could take a lesson or two from Texas on living with large numbers of the “other” and even liking it.
Remember the Alamo!
Man this thread is a hot one.
Kodiak, is there a bit of transference going on here? YOU are the one defacto accusing the US and George W. of “corporate fascism” or whatever, while I began this thread by stating that we should not be prepared to swallow preconceived notions about France in the same manner that preconceived and untruthful notions about the US are being swallowed whole in Europe without a second thought. Check the record above.
At what point did I call France “coward and retarded” or even imply it?? Or that we should nuke it? (vile)
As for me focusing on race, guess again. I’ve heard about enough from overseas about how ‘racist’ the US is. Tell me about it when Mr. Villepin is replaced by a Muslim, when a Muslim or African woman is your highest ranking National Security official, and the number of Muslim Mayors and city officials even approaches the number of black mayor and councilmen in the US for the past 30 years.
It is not race that concerns me, but national culture. And I do have an issue with Muslim populations, or any population, in a Western nation, when they give serious indications that their loyalty is not to the Western civilization that they fled TO (with good reason), but rather to the civilization they fled FROM.
Simply from watching what the politically active among them do, I do not get sense that the most profound foundations of Western society and (yes) the Judeo-Christian culture of 500 years that produced it, matter very much. As a matter of fact, my sense is that a growing number see that culture as an enemy to be opposed.
The entire gist of the Front Page discussion is that that is the case, and France ignores it at extreme peril. And those “core values” you mention being the same 50 years from now, well, many are starting to wonder. What if “tolerance” tolerates itself in tolerating intolerance? (There’s a sentence.)
An aside. Chris Hitchens mentions working at the BBC, near the BBC’s “male prayer room”. Excuse me? The BBC, so quick to viciously attack Bush for his Christianity, now bars women from this room in the name of “tolerance”? Why not do the same thing with race? Do southern whites not have a right to a “White Prayer Room”. (yuk). But if not, WHY not? This is what happens when tolerance of intolerance leads us all back in time, if you will. Thus, so called progressives are nothing of the sort. They are regressives, in fact. We should call them such.
Anyway, I’m glad you are in the forum, swinging away. But please do not accuse me of positions not even close to what I say, and, to be blunt, we in the US are seeing a LOT of that lately from our detractors, and guess what… it pisses us off, and makes us more inclined to support Bush just to stick him in the eye of sanctimonious purveyors of obscene untruths.
It think both sides need to check and re-check our facts on the ground before we start spewing. And that brings me back to how I started here, by saying lets not just believe what we want to before look at it twice, three, and four times over.
Thanks for feeling sad for me. Why not save it, though, for someone deserving.
Dear funny (at last!!!…) Kelly,
Unfortunately I’m so bad a patriot that I couldn’t sing nor write the words od the Marseillaise.
But rest assured I’m 100% froggish…
I don’t know what “Gunsmoke” is but fortunately I know “Dallas”.
Well I’d like to remain on that highly cultural vein & hollow out the typical features of Texan actual celebrities or fictional characters & retort about the illegal bellicoseness (belliquousity??? >>> whatever…) of the neocons Bush clique.
Listen Kelly, it’s not because Sue Ellen Ewing, too, had an enduring love affair with the bottle that the USA is anyhow entitled to prepare, sell, orchestrate, deliver & vindicate an illagal preventive war against Liechtenstein.
Did you know that French troops were requested to intervene by the UN -the sole legitimity holder in this World?
Kodiak.
I’m impressed by the speed with which this thread has turned into “just another familiar orgy of ‘Anglospheric’ Frog-bashing.”
Ken
Not to mention the Francospheric Anglo-bashing
Hi Andrew X,
1/ “At what point did I call France “coward and retarded” or even imply it?? Or that we should nuke it? (vile)” >>> I owe you flat excuses if I hurt you >>> I was just being nasty (or at least trying to).
2/ “Tell me about it when Mr. Villepin is replaced by a Muslim, when a Muslim or African woman is your highest ranking National Security official, and the number of Muslim Mayors and city officials even approaches the number of black mayor and councilmen in the US for the past 30 years”.
There were and are French ministers, corporate leaders, top-ranking civil servants & stuff of black, Arab & Asian descent.
The mayor of Paris is gay & I would be very happy too if, on top of that, he would be Black or Arab, provided he’s competent & honest.
3/ “And I do have an issue with Muslim populations, or any population, in a Western nation, when they give serious indications that their loyalty is not to the Western civilization that they fled TO (with good reason), but rather to the civilization they fled FROM”.
I’m positive you sound sincere but your fears don’t seem well grounded.
In the 30s many French angry agaisnt the Poles, the Italians, the Armenians, the Belgians & so on >>> & today if look into the dictory for Marseille you’ll find out a huge mass of Martinis, Viscontis, Dabrowiczs, Zgormienkos, Manoukians, Vanassians, Vanderweldes, Zijtenwrouds etc, all normal French citizens.
I live in an area where white-coloured people are actually a minority by numbers.
In my neighbourhood I can find:
— Blacks originating from mainland France, french West Indies & all over Africa (not just French speaking former colonies);
— Arabs from Northern Africa (Maghreb & Machrek), Levantines, Iraqi, Iranians, Kurds etc;
— Mandchourians, North Chinese, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Cambodgians, Laotians, Koreans (South, of course >>> except if French intelligence is plotting with North Koreans an attack against the USA);
— provincial Gaulese (Gallic???), European neighbours, Unitedstatish people;
— Tunisian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Polish Jews, Lithuanian Jews, Israelian Jews etc;
— Indians, Pakistanese, Afghanese etc.
No really I’m not afraid of 2003 France.
I’m happy with it.
Thanx.
Kodiak.
SPECIAL REPLY TO KELLY (PRIVATE)
Salut Kelly!
Et 1.000 mercis pour tes somptueuses tirades qui s’apparentent parfois à des flèches vengeresses, certes trop hâtivement décochées pour prétendre toucher leur cible, mais relativement bien envoyées pour susciter une bienveillante hilarité.
Pour le reste du blog, franchement je n’ai jamais autant ri de ma vie.
Si c’est vraiment ce que vous pensez des grèves en France, c’est comique.
Mais c’est intéressant d’avoir un point de vue exotique. Ca permet d’éviter l’écueil du francocentrisme, malheureusement si répandu en France.
Vous, les Anglophones, me ferez toujours rire parce que vous croyez vraiment à ce que vous croyez avoir dit ou avoir vu. C’est mignon. Surtout ne changez pas.
Voilà, Kelly.
J’espère t’avoir convaincu que je suis une grenouille 100% pur boeuf.
Bon vent et que la vie te soit douce et belle.
Kodiak.
The bid stands at 80 comments. No, 81, Thank you mad dog…
…do I hear anymore bidders?
Sue Ellen Ewing was not a drunk.
She was “suffering from exhaustion.”
Kodiak est un fat.
Il ne sait pas s’exprimer correctement à une dame en jouant des airs précieux.
Si je tutoyais ce bonhomme, se serait pour lui marquer son insignificiance, ou pour indiquer que je couchais avec.
[Kodiak is a pompous person.
He does not know how to express himself correctly to a lady and he lays on precious airs.
If I adressed him in a familiar fashion as “tu”, it would be to make a point of his insignificance, or to indicate that I’d slept with it.]
My guess is that he’s an uncouth Canadian fake posing as a proper Frenchman: what we call a “ouin-ouin”.
Hence the crap.
Kodiak,
Comparing Texas to Spain is like comparing apples to oranges. The correct way to look at it is comparing the citizens of Texas to the citizens of Granada. And yes Texans are more free. They have the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. I’m guessing that Spaniards don’t have a constitutional right to bear arms, hell, probably not even a first admendment. And Texas prevented the U.S. from being overrun by a European backed regime in Mexico in the 19th century.
I also sense a great deal of personal resentment towards Americans in general. Usually when people counter debate with insults or colorful Friday in the Mosque crazy imam disjointed Anti-American rantings I put them down for low self-esteem or having an absolute lack of argument.
So to help me understand your side of the, er, argument tell me what is right with France as opposed to telling me what is wrong with America. I pretty much know what’s wrong in America, hell I live here, they’re called big-government control freak socialists. If you tell me what good is going to come out of what is happening in France, I’m wide open. My side of the argument is that ‘nothing’ good is going to come out of it. In the best case scenario it will be the status quo which to me seems almost intolerable, not a cure to the problem, just a postponment of the dreaded and possibly violent cure. And maybe the French like it, who knows? But the rest of the E.U., it would seem, has a right not to have this insanity thrust upon them because of French hubris. But then maybe I wrong there, too. Maybe the Europeans are slavish masochists. Either way France needs the E.U. to dilute its problems and spread the tax burden, to support its bureaucrats and unions, to unsuspecting Poles and other Europeans. I would not be suprised at all that one day in the future at an E.U. parliment a French bureaucrat brings up a piece of legislation to have the E.U. name changed to France. Heh.
Well, your neighborhood sounds a lot like mine in Washington, DC….. or New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles. I haven’t heard you accuse the US of being “racist”, so I won’t say otherwise. I have heard from outside though, all too often. It’s a crock.
The general issue for us in the West, all of us, and it is certainly the opinion of American Republicans like moi (shocker), is that 100 million non-white, non-Christian, non-“Western” people have come to live in the West over the past 50 years FOR A REASON. It has been essentially a one-way immigration. A huge reason for the success of the West, that has resulted in that fact, is the healthy self-criticism and renewal that has made us all into what we are today as societies.
And we watch with horror as the International Left has morphed that self-criticism into relentless disparagement and “deconstruction” of virtually everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, that has made that West the desired home of so many from all points of the globe. I don’t know if I can even think of ANYTHING about Western society that the Left will say, “Yes, THIS particular thing is a great thing about the West that others should emulate.” I cannot imagine even one thing they would say that about.
Yet, for any obscene tyranny or pre-modern culture to oppose the West, like Islamism or Saddam, thousands, even millions will take to the streets to support that “other”, many of them to show how “tolerant” and wise they are, not like us proles who defend Western Civilization only because we haven’t been enlightened by any number of professors or philosophers telling us how despicable it all is, certainly compared to the moral purity of say, the Taliban.
This seems to be veering off topic, but it isn’t. This kind of thinking is much more prevalent on the Continent, including yes, in France, where the Left is very powerful, and a big part of the thinking in the Front Page article, that France is in danger, is the seeming relish with which people go about “deconstructing” it’s Western foundations. That is a threat that goes far beyond just France. But what we see in the streets are a lot of people following that path to it’s logical end, tolerating those who despise Western Civilization, while lifting not a finger to defend it’s freedoms, liberties, and it’s own inherent and real tolerance, a tolerance that FAR exceeds that of any opponent of the West, any place, any time, any where.
They do this and expect that their freedoms, their liberty, and yes, their wealth and the ability to create it, will always just fall from the sky like rain, and will never need defense or protection.
So in the end, we both have our theories about the future of any country where a vast number of immigrants combine with huge number of “Westerners” who think that the only thing to teach those immigrants and their own children about Western Civilization is how awful it all is. Presumably, we will both get our answers in due time.
With that, I’m wrapping this one up. Cheers to all.
At this very moment, in my office located in the ultra-conservative lily-white, fundamentalist Protestant Christian, misogynistic state of Texas, I have
To my left, a conservative Cajun non-practicing Catholic woman.
To my diagonal left, an office with two Indian programmers (that’s from India, not Native Americans) brought here as contractors
Directly across the hall, a Buddhist Vietnamese woman – not American of Vietnamese descent, but actually from Vietnam
To my diagonal right, an African-American woman who is neither poor nor uneducated
To my direct right, an Anglo faithful Catholic woman
My supervisor is a woman.
As is her supervisor.
No cowboys though. Darn.
I did indeed conflate striking with picketing. You never see one without the other in the US. Everyone has the freedom to not show up for work, I suppose, but that doesn’t really make it a strike in my book. That could be a vacation, for all I know, or a retirement. Striking seems to require that someone else be forced to go along with your agenda, either through the coercion of the picket line or the legal coercion of labor rules that prohibit the firing of strikers. Regardless, it is indeed the intimidatory aspect of picketing that I particularly don’t like.
Here in the states, we also constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly, which translates into freedom to protest and march. That doesn’t change my low opinion of these techniques, which have little to do with rational discourse and everything to do with mindless groupthink and intimidation.
As for what happened in Seattle, yes, I believe that anyone committing acts of violence other than in self-defence should be subjected to legal consequences. Its the old rule of law thing – your politics shouldn’t affect how the law is applied to your actions.
M. Kodiak,
“the menace of the growing, unassimilated, extremist Arab minority in France” doesn’t exist at all.
So those famous and heavyweight French participants in the frontpage symposium are all talking nonesense ?
“I know that poverty, ignorance, injustice & indifference are the real menace in France…”
And this has nothing to do with the Arab immigrants which are rich, educated, justly treated, tolerant and well integrated in French society… ?
Unitedstatish…haha. That’s great! Is that the United States of Mexico? It is a great old ploy, though; try and control the language of the debate as well as throw in a LOT of non-sequitors.
HI YOU GUYS
WISH YOU A PLEASANT SUNNY DAY
First I’d like to address many thanx to you all interested in the scandalising French disaster.
It’s quite refreshing to be given (for free!!!) an immediately workable bunch of valuable advice. I’ll make a note of it & try to process it within my Frog skull & send a letter to my député (MP) for him to propose a brand new draft law & open a prolific debate outlining our Anglophone friends’ analysis regarding how Frogland’s future ought to be shaped.
NEWS OF THE DAY
1/ CHAPEAU BAS AUX POMPIERS BRITANNIQUES
Hat off to the innovating British firemen (firepersons should I say?) who got a promising 16-percent pay rise from Anthony Bliar (remember WMD?…).
And guess what? How did they get this victory against the avaricious Queen’s Treasury?
BY STRIKING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2/ SALUT GREG ET MERCI
Obituary: Peck has gone & he’ll be regretted.
3/ LES MAIGRES PERFORMANCES DE L’AXE DU BIEN
Some questions to Unitedstatish Evilterminators:
where is Ben Laden?
where is Saddam?
where are WMD?
how is Kim Il Song doing?
any news from Iran?
is Sue Ellen fine?
Kodiak
Dear Mr bitter Jacob,
1/—————“So those famous and heavyweight French participants in the frontpage symposium are all talking nonesense ? ”
—————–Sorry: I don’t know what you’re referring to.
2/—————“”I know that poverty, ignorance, injustice & indifference are the real menace in France…” And this has nothing to do with the Arab immigrants which are rich, educated, justly treated, tolerant and well integrated in French society… ?”
—————–No it hasn’t indeed. Why do you want a cheap, hard-featured, sardonic, envenomed scapegoat to express your concern about societal issues?
I’m not saying there’s no problem with some people in France (Arab, Gallic, educated or not…).
Me too I’d be delighted if it would be enough to charter a plane or a boat and ship all mentally disturbed jerks to a foreign country >>> but I (wrongly?) suspect this attitude could perhaps be regarded as a simplistic, unefficient, disgraceful, appalling one.
Kodiak.
Dear T. Hartin,
1/——-“I did indeed conflate striking with picketing”.
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Fair enough.
.
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2/——“You never see one without the other in the US”.
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Strange indeed.
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3/——–“Everyone has the freedom to not show up for work, I suppose, but that doesn’t really make it a strike in my book.”
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The basic definition of “striking” is “refusing to work”, not “not working”, not “not turning up” etc.
There’s a volitive connotation in the act of “striking”. So it’s not a holiday. You get paid when you go on holidays. You aren’t when you strike (well in France at least).
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4/——“That doesn’t change my low opinion of these techniques, which have little to do with rational discourse and everything to do with mindless groupthink and intimidation”.
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OK. Just striking is NOT a mere opposing & claiming technique. It’s also an unquestionable right that can’t be wiped out as such. Unless decline in social gains & in citizenry is wanted.
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Kodiak
Dear Houstonian Steve,
I find it great you’re lucky enough to work in a challenging & interesting environment.
It’s rewarding to collaborate with different people busy to reach the same goal.
I know that Texas is not a Nazi camp.
But you have low advisable fellow citizens like a certain George The Second.
Anyway. Isn’t Texas’ renown also based on its world-famous consideration for Human Life?
Hi Andrew X,
Well, it’s funny that your neighbourhood ressemble mine. Good thing, innit?
You may be right when attributing Occident’s success to basic human values which are so commonly shared because they do elevate people or at least make them on the move, for the better & the worse. Life’s just a walk after all…
Yet (and believe me I don’t like to indulge in sterile culpability & don’t get pleasure when I’m beaten), we all ought to reckon that our white, religion-obsessed or religion-scorning predecessors weren’t necessarily the finest philanthropes ever seen on Earth…
You know, even if I’m a typical white from the West or something approaching, I don’t feel that the Western society is my cretaure, or that I’ve got a special link with people who died 500 years ago. May be I’ve got more in common with a present-day Papouan than with Louis XIV: the Sun King is just ashes now, & my strange brother of the Antipodes is living, like me.
————————————————————
Now Andrew, let me quote this staggering tirade of yours:
“(…) the International Left has morphed that self-criticism into relentless disparagement and “deconstruction” of virtually everything (…). Yet, for any obscene tyranny or pre-modern culture to oppose the West, like Islamism or Saddam, thousands, even millions will take to the streets to support that “other”, many of them to show how “tolerant” and wise they are, not like us proles who defend Western Civilization only because we haven’t been enlightened by any number of professors or philosophers telling us how despicable it all is, certainly compared to the moral purity of say, the Taliban”.
Ouf!!!
You’re almost worst than the average French intellectual chatting nonsense in Parisian salons.
Believe me: 99,99 % of the Muslims are pretty much like us.
————————————————————
France is 2.500 yo in her Gallic & pre-Gallic form, & 1.200 yo in her French & proto-French common acception.
She has also invented a Western identity that’s partially still valid today.
Do you think the Frogs want to commit suicide?
Let me tell you 2 or 3 things.
France is aware enough to have been able to thwart a Twin-Tower-like attack on the Eiffel Tower (in 1995 or so). The hi-jackers weren’t just aided by forks & knives (!!!) like Mohammed Atta in New York, but with real loaded guns & bazookas. Nevertheless the plane didn’t crash in Paris & was rerouted & forced to land in Marseilles where the GIGN (a kind of special assault forces) killed all the terrorists without the passengers & the crew being even wounded.
Similarly French intelligence (DST) has provided the Unitedstatish authorities with relevent, credible evidence of large-scale coup against the USA (not a long time before 9/11) >>> it wasn’t taken into account.
Chirac’s family has not financed Ben Laden & Co, & France is doing her best to infiltrate Green Neonazis (Ben Laden) everywhere on the globe.
As for Saddam, it’s a totally different music.
Kodiak.
Dear D2D,
1/ “Comparing Texas to Spain is like comparing apples to oranges”.
Yeah, but sometimes a comparison is needed, isn’t it?
.
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2/ “The correct way to look at it is comparing the citizens of Texas to the citizens of Granada. And yes Texans are more free. They have the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States”.
I wouldn’t compare Texas with Grenade as I wouldn’t compare Spain with Fort Worth…
The Spaniards are pretty much happy with their working political life, & aptly so.
They have given much power through efficient devolution (not like in Scotland) to the Pays Basque, to Catalogne, to Asturies etc.
Yet you’re right there’s a hic (a “snag” in English?) >>> their PM could act in spite of what 99% of the Spaniard wanted: refusing Bushist gross vassalage to kill innocents & steal oil. Never mind. C’est la vie après tout.
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3/ I’m not in love with socialists and Chirac is not a socialist.
I don’t think it’s socialistically hysterical or crypto-anti-Western to shout publicly a huge “FUCK OFF!” (excuse my French…) to George The Second.
Kodiak.
Cher Antoine Clarke,
For I’ve been frequently & (unfairly) reminded (by sometimes lazy persons who won’t take the pain of building arguments) to drop my vernacular Frog propension to utter personal words of abuse, I’m expecting those courageous censors to have a word with you.
I won’t.
Except for the ridiculous bit of your “text” insinuating chances are I could be Canadian, & henceforward a subject of the Windsor family !!!
How revolting!!!
For Frog’s sake >>> my parents are Francophone French born in France, & I’m not forced to Anglo-Saxon exposure as Canadians are.
Kodiak.
Dear Houstonian Steve,
I’m sincerely appalled at the not-so-thorough, unfair, not-too-credible treatment you issue about Sue Ellen’s misgivings & felony.
Well have it said that I’ll move this topic off Texas to Colorado.
May be I’ll find there something more appropriate in relation with Alexis Carrington…
Kodiak.
Andrew X – I suggest you copy your lucid and thoughtful comment and post it under the Comments section of the Frontpagemag symposium.
Kodiak,
I am truly sorry but your response to my post made no sense to me what so ever. Whatever your argument is is lost on me. Especially that part about comparing a sovereign nation, Spain, to a state, Texas, (which does have limited sovereignty granted to it by the 10th amendment) within a sovereign nation, the United States. Simply put Texas is not a nation, Spain is.
I did not say that Spaniards weren’t unhappy with their situation I just said that they were less free than Americans living in Texas . Until the 1970’s Spain was an unfree facist nation.
I did not say Chirac was a socialist. But France is definitely run by socialist bureaucrats, and all your rage about Americans and President Bush along with your screeching for social justice and income re-distribution has me wondering where you are coming from. You may not be in love with socialists, but it sure reads like you’re in love with socialism.
Dear D2D,
Your apple-orange, Spain-Texas (or why not Jupiterish-Mongolese) digression wasn’t that scintillating either.
Now Spaniards are less free than Unitedstatish inhabiting Texas. May be the question should be asked to some Black low-income innocent Texans awaiting their bright future in the death row of Huntsville…
My “screeching” vociferations don’t equate to rage against Unitedstatish people, including the excellent George The Second. As far as pension are concerned, I’m not for redistribution; I’m just for contribution >>> company ought to pay to maintain their employees’ long-term welfare, and not just to maintain their physical assets in good working condition, or not just to maintain their financial assets in good profitable position.
You’re right: until the 70s Spain wasn’t a quite democratic State but at least she had the rare opportunity to be constellated with democratic US army bases which brought about fierce hostile controversy to General Franco.
Kodiak
I never thought I’d get there but yes! This is comment 101. Shades of George Orwell…
…I reckon this saga could have its own web site! But it is nice to see you all discussing things rather than exchanging projectiles.
FROM KODIAK WITH LOVE…
I think it’s now high time I left you all calmly expatiate far-reaching pontifications about “The Fate Of France” (!!! no kidding…), Europe, the Social Security, apples and bananas, Ben Laden, the pension, the redistribution, the threatening Islam & the French suburbs of Strasbourg or Bordeaux…
I had a great time with you all. Altough a bit exhausted (I admit that thinking in English gives me headache, but I assume that thinking like Anglo-Saxons gives me pimples), I’ll probably recover soon.
Special ackowlegement to Becky (will you excuse me all the same if that Gallic praising is not really flattering?) who at least knows what she’s speaking of.
Thanx too to dynamic, incisive Kelly >>> I had much fun.
Liberty Belle >>> I don’t wanna be rude but I’m planning to catch you, to imprison you in a wooden wheeled cage, to ship you to Paris for you to be exhibited in the first zoo I come across. Then you’ll be watched over, gazed at, decorticated by hilarious French kids. I think I may earn a good 3 euros per day thanx to your collaboration. (LB: it’s not you, just your comic ideas…).
Now I really want to provide you with perfect amunition to wage further (friendly) Frog-bashing in other arenas. After all you can’t be best served than by yourself. I hope that I likewise will prove to Kelly that I’m incurably French…
Pourquoi le coq est-il l’emblème national de la France?
Parce que c’est le seul animal qui chante les pieds dans la merde.
Whys is the Gallic chanticleer emblematic for France?
Because that’s the only animal able to sing while his feet are stunck in crap.
Sans rancune, aucune.
Kodiak.
MEIN GOTT !!!
I CAN’T HELP…
I HAVEN’T BEEN GOING THE ENTIRE THREAD HERE >>> I FORGOT SOME BRIGHT COMMENTS BY LIBERTY BELLE
Dear Slavery Laide, (sorry: ou deserved that one)
———————–
1/ “Why are they still closing for two hours for lunch?”
Why don’t you come here & check for yourself?
———————
2/ “Why are all the stores closed on Sunday?”
Why don’t you go to French malls open on Sundays?
————————-
3/ “Why don’t the French, in the memorable words of George Bush, have a word for entrepreneur?”
That one was the most cruel for you LB…
Why don’t you buy a dictionary about English etymology & check that “entrepreneur” is a 100% Frog word that was borrowed by Anglophones in need for concepts…
The meaning of borrowed “entrepeneur” in English being the same of the original French one.
LB you’re pathetic. Your French must be as rich as is the English linguo of George The Second.
He & you took precisely the wrongest, most ridiculous way to show off your gross ignorance.
Well, if liberty is to be defended by such enlightened clowns, I’ll have a great laugh.
——————————
I’ve seen some bits of your symposium stuff.
This is farcical. For instance you should investigate a bit further about the extreme-right past of Alain Madelin & why he’s always getting 0.0000000005 % of the opinion polls, not to mention his lacking electoral records. Of course the fact that he is pathetically aping the neocons while winning no vote is exactly proving that the French are smart enough to avoid any Aznarish, Bliarist, Berlusconiesque type of “leaders”.
I still don’t know why you’re experiencing a kind of prenatal psychologic disorder when speaking about France.
Really the French were right to kick your ass publicly. I know it hurt you because now there’s a huge river of hatred, paralysing stupidity, gross ignorance, sheer insincerity, provocative disinformation etc.
God. I never thought that idiocy could reach such highest peaks…
Unless the situation is so grave in your own countries that you need any derivative available to stop panicking for a while?
I do hope you don’t represent the bulk of the population of your respective countries…
Why are you so afraid of Muslim people?
Why do you think the French are as scared as you are?
Why can’t you analyse things after due investigation & sang-froid attitude?
Why don’t you address Pakistan instead of attacking Iraq & mocking France?
Can’t you measure up to the implications of your power without being hysterical to your closest -albeit exotic- allies?
Why are you fantasising about the French of Jewish religion being at war with the French of Muslim religion?
Why are you so assertive & disdainful about things or people different from you?
WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF ???
WHOM ARE YOU AFRAID OF ???
WHY ARE YOU AFRAID ???
HOW DID YOU COME TO BE AFRAID ???
DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT OVERCOME ???
devastated Kodiak
I think our guest amphibian is disappointed that he hasn’t managed to provoke his own banning. He grows shrill.
Frankly, (no pun intended) I prefer to be labeled a Unitedstater.
Say what you will about prisons, the U.S. has the best prisons in the world, way better than French prisons, well maybe not better than Devil’s Island, but pretty damn good. Heh. And no one would be on death row in Huntsville if they hadn’t murdered someone else, depriving the victim of their civil and God-given rights to life.
What are the French police using to break up the riots? Is it one of those new secret weapons the crepe cannon or the lethal gravy gun.
Benefits such as health insurance started out, in the U.S. anyway, as an enticement to qualified workers to come work for a company or if already working to stay with the company. It was and is part of the overall compensation package for the employee; not a freebie entitlement (ususally paid in pretax dollars which the democrats absolutely hate). In France and in Europe not only has this become an entitlement but a right also. And this shows the major difference in our views and the philosphies of the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S. our rights are inalienable, granted to U.S. by our Creator and the Constitutuon limits the government’s power over our lives. We haven given the U.S. government our consent to be governed, this is from the bottom up governance. In Europe the E.U. constitution grants Europeans their rights. In other words if the government doesn’t spell it out as a right it does not exsist for the European citizen. That’s why the E.U. constitution is so damn long; 77 articles at last count. This is top down governance. In contrast the U.S. constitution is only 7 articles long with 27 amendments the first 10 being the Bill of Rights and two of the later amendments negating each other.
In the U.S. there is nothing more important than the individual citizen. And each individual citizen has the same rights limiting the government from intruding on his life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. In Europe there is nothing more important than the government. Now you tell me, who is more free.
HI D2D
HOMICIDE RATE
Canada 18 per million inhab
USA 63.
(Sorry I don’t have other figures).
Why?
INCARCERATION RATE
Canada 1 180 per million inhab
UK 1 250
France 900
Japan 400
South Africa 4 000
Russia 6 440
USA 6 990.
Why?
GUN HOMICIDES
France = 200 >>> 3,3 per million inhab
Germany = 300 >>> 3,7
Canada = 165 >>> 5,5
UK = 68 >>> 1,1
Austria = 65 >>> 8,1
Japan = 39 >>> 0,3
USA = 11.000 >>> 39,3.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Eugenism was prevailing in the USA as this famous Unitedstater called Madison Grant published the US masterpiece called “The Passing Of The Great Race In America” in the early 20s.
Don’t you realise Bush is now actually delivering revisited eugenism against non US countries as Iraq, soon Iran & perhaps France too???
Don’t you remember reshaped Reaganomics applied full-scale to slaughtered people of Nicaragua?
You can’t say we didn’t warn you to wake up before it’s too late.
Don’t you remember the blibical stuff about the staw in the eye?
My God!!! Do something about your country that’s revelling in self-satisfaction while fastidiously kept in abyssal dormancy…
Kodiak
“I still don’t know why you’re experiencing a kind of prenatal psychologic disorder when speaking about France.”
And why are you, dear Kodiak, when speaking about the US ?
Your “psychologic disorder” (pre or post natal ) is second to none.
“Why do you think the French are as scared as you are?”
Because many Franch, including those in the symposium said so.
“Why can’t you analyse things after due investigation & sang-froid attitude?”
Well, that’s precisely what they did, and after a very sang-froid analysis they are convinced that a grave problem exists.
“Why are you so afraid of Muslim people?”
Because, as they stated, 50% of the crime in France is perpetrated by muslims, not to mention 98.5% of terrorist murders world-wide.
“3/ “Why don’t the French, in the memorable words of George Bush, have a word for entrepreneur?”
I thought that beside good wine and beautiful women the French also had a sense of humor.
Now I see why some commenters doubted Kodiak was genuine !
(I liked, though, the Anthony Bliar thing).
Well, Kudos to Kodiak for keeping us all busy. Seriously.
BTW, K. , among your questions included “How is Kim Il Song doing”….
Not too well, I hear. When you’ve been dead for seven years, I hear you don’t look too hot.
About 99.9% of Muslims being “just like us” (including the ones I work with here in the States), well, suffice to say that my point is that SOMETHING is driving millions of those folks to seek their lives and fortunes in Western, non-Muslim (for now) societies. The Left categorically refuses to look at why that is UNLESS they can blame it on the West to start with, which is a crock. It is democracy and liberty that brings them here, two concepts the Left is devoted to destroying at any cost because neither produces perfection or utopia, they simply produce freedom, and all the good and the bad that comes with it. (And that is a LOT more good than the Left has ever or will ever produce.)
Bush has been saying that you are correct. 99.9% of Muslims want just that, and will never have it as long as despicable creatures like Saddam own their lives, lock, stock, and barrel. Bush has been saying that all along. On Feb 15th, 10 million took to the streets to say otherwise, or essentially say they cared not one damn bit for democracy and freedom, and not a few of such people were in France and Europe. By the list of people the Left has supported based on their anti-American / anti-Western credentials, I can only assume that they do not in fact care one damn bit for liberty and freedom, that they are in fact categorically pro-totalitarian, andI will treat them as such and intellectually encourage all others to do so as well.
It is the power of such people in France that we believe may lead it to it’s doom. As I said, presumably we shall both find out our answers, possibly in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks for your input here, Kodiak, you’ve given us all a good run.
Comment concilier islam et modernité ?
How to reconcile islam and modernity?
Par MOHAMMED ARKOUN
Professeur émérite d’histoire de la pensée islamique à la Sorbonne
Auteur, notamment, de “Que s’est-il passé le 11 septembre ?” éditions Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2002.
« Islam » et « modernité » : ces deux concepts-clefs demandent à être retravaillés pour sortir des confusions courantes répandues par des usages polémiques, idéologiques tendant à opposer deux forces antagonistes hors de toute analyse historique, sociologique, anthropologique, théologique et philosophique. Il est nécessaire, en effet, de mobiliser toutes ces disciplines pour expliciter les enjeux de pensée, de culture, de civilisation, généralement escamotés, même par de prétendus experts de l’un ou l’autre de ces deux pôles de ce que j’appellerai « l’histoire du temps présent ». Car si les contentieux entre ce qu’on nomme globalement « l’islam » et « l’Occident » se trouvent déjà clairement exprimés dans le discours coranique, c’est à partir de 1945 que des guerres sévères et répétées ont alimenté les passions, les haines irréductibles, les exclusions réciproques sur la base de données théologiques islamiques, juives et chrétiennes qui ont fonctionné depuis le Moyen Age, comme des systèmes intellectuels, « spirituels », moraux et juridiques d’exclusion réciproque.
Ces systèmes construits par chaque communauté pour revendiquer d’avoir été élu, par Dieu, dépositaire exclusif de la Vérité révélée continuent de fonctionner actuellement encore comme des instances de légitimation des « guerres justes » récurrentes depuis 1945 : guerre de libération algérienne (1954-1962), guerre de Suez (1956), guerre de six jours (1967), guerre de Kippour (1973), guerre du Golfe (1991), guerre contre le terrorisme… On notera que toutes ces guerres engagent des protagonistes liés aux héritages religieux, culturels, symboliques communs à l’espace méditerranéen, qui se trouve divisé depuis l’émergence de l’islam en rives « judéo-chrétiennes », puis modernes laïques, et en rives arabo-turco-irano musulmanes.
Les historiographies reflètent les processus de construction de mémoires collectives retranchées dans des citadelles « mytho-historiques ». Elles s’alimentent toujours dans des thématiques dialectiques consistant à faire valoir la nécessité de défendre le Bien et le Vrai contre le Mal et l’égarement. Le vocabulaire utilisé par l’Europe-Occident « moderne » réactive des représentations et des connotations médiévales, tout en se réclamant avec force de la vulgate orthodoxe des valeurs « occidentales » démocratiques, laïques, humanistes, humanitaires…
Comment vivre avec l’islam ? Pour répondre à cette question, il est indispensable de distinguer le concept géopolitique, géo-économique et monétaire d’Occident du concept géo-historique et géoculturel d’Europe : le premier a commencé à s’affirmer depuis 1945 sous le leadership de plus en plus explicite des Etats-Unis, notamment dans ce que la terminologie anglo-américaine appelle Middle East ; le second reste solidaire du précédent, mais avec l’islam des références historiques, intellectuelles et culturelles communes remontant au haut Moyen Age. On invoque souvent ces références soit au niveau des relations bilatérales entre Etats-nations, soit au niveau de l’Union européenne avec le dialogue euro-méditerranéen inauguré en 1995 à Barcelone. Il y a en outre des relations anciennes de voisinage géographique entre l’Europe méditerranéenne et le monde arabo-turc de l’ancienne Mare Nostrum. Si l’on ajoute l’importance du courant migratoire autour de la Méditerranée, on mesurera mieux l’urgence politique pour l’Union européenne de dépasser le stade des échanges inégaux et aléatoires, sans cesse renégociés avec des Etats peu soucieux de la légitimité démocratique, pour construire une histoire solidaire des peuples, fondée sur le respect strict par tous les partenaires de ces « valeurs » brandies comme l’enjeu suprême des guerres en cours depuis 1945.
Une histoire solidaire des peuples
Cette solidarité dûment négociée et protégée par les Etats et les peuples qu’ils représentent implique l’inauguration d’une diplomatie préventive consacrée, en dehors des moments de crise aiguë, à la mise en place d’une politique commune de la recherche en sciences de l’homme et de société.Elle suppose la diffusion large des résultats de cette recherche tant par les médias que par un tronc commun du système éducatif pour l’enseignement de disciplines-clefs capables d’apporter des réponses fiables, scientifiquement élaborées, aux problèmes qui ont divisé depuis des siècles des consciences dites civiques, nationales ou religieuses également conditionnées par des historiographies partisanes, mytho-idéologiques et mobilisables à tout moment contre l’ennemi construit de longue date. Car c’est bien cela qui continue de se passer et que l’on continue de travestir par des dialogues inter-religieux, interculturels où l’on ressasse depuis Vatican II et la prétendue décolonisation, des appels moralisants à la tolérance, des déclarations de respect pour les valeurs de l’autre… J’ai assisté à grand nombre de colloques de ce type où l’on a tenu des propos sur les religions qui renseignent plus sur notre ignorance partagée concernant chaque tradition religieuse et davantage encore le fait religieux comme dimension anthropologique de la condition humaine.
Seule une histoire solidaire des peuples ainsi esquissée pourra amener la pensée islamique et les musulmans à affronter, pour la première fois de leur histoire, les défis les plus qualifiants de la modernité et à bénéficier des apports universalistes de la pensée scientifique et de l’interrogation philosophique. Car la pensée islamique a régulièrement rejeté jusqu’ici les conquêtes les plus libératrices de la pensée critique moderne ; elle s’est enfermée dans une clôture dogmatique avec une posture agressive contre cet Occident dominateur et sûr de lui tel qu’il s’est effectivement donné à vivre, à percevoir et interpréter par tous les peuples dont il continue de gonfler les imaginaires de la résistance et de refouler dans des refuges ou repaires identitaires.
Il est faux d’incriminer ces entités abstraites appelées indifféremment le Coran ou « l’islam » comme une idéologie de combat. Celle-ci fonctionne en fait comme une réaction dialectique aux pressions extérieures sur des sociétés privées, depuis le XIXe siècle au moins, de produire leur propre histoire par un travail de soi sur soi qui ne soit pas interrompu, faussé, réorienté par des volontés de puissances étrangères et ouvertement conquérantes. Une dialectique de la domination, de l’agression politique et culturelle et du contrôle géopolitique d’un côté, de l’exaspération du sentiment de faiblesse, d’humiliation, d’arriération, d’oppression, d’échec de l’autre. On notera que cette dialectique pourtant évidente n’est jamais lue comme telle du côté occidental ; elle est inversée même par des historiens très influents comme Bernard Lewis (1), qui « explique » les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 par des ressorts, des facteurs, des « choix » libres, tous internes à « l’islam » et aux régimes arabes notamment.
S’il ne faut jamais omettre de désigner le jeu des causes lointaines et des faits immédiats s’inscrivant dans les structures propres aux sociétés travaillées par le fait islamique, encore faut-il souligner les effets multiplicateurs et les conditions aggravantes des interventions ouvertes de l’Occident depuis la date repère et symbolique de 1492 – la découverte de l’Amérique et l’expulsion des musulmans et des juifs d’Espagne.
Il y aurait beaucoup plus à dire sur tous ces contentieux, ces malentendus, ces ignorances cultivées dans les traditions historiogra- phiques ; ces guerres récurrentes où les positions de bourreau et de victime s’inversent radicalement ; ces valeurs invoquées pour réactiver des légitimités obsolètes, alors qu’elles sont trahies ou frappées de dérision par ceux-là mêmes qui les brandissent. Les excès de la passion, de la rage meurtrière, des condamnations réciproques, des rejets radicaux que nous observons partout depuis le 11 septembre 2001 ne laissent guère de place ou d’occasions aux voix et aux témoignages capables d’ouvrir de nouveaux horizons de pensée, de connaissance et d’action historiques, pourtant à notre portée. Une pensée critique qui dispose des outils conceptuels et des postures de la raison nécessaires pour donner un sens et assigner de nouvelles tâches à cette histoire solidaire des peuples libérée des dualismes manichéens et orientée vers le dépassement du Bien et du Mal, du Vrai et du Faux, de l’Elu et du Réprouvé, du Civilisé et du Barbare, des Lumières et des Ténèbres…
MOHAMMED ARKOUN.
Idées
Islam
Religion
——————————————————————————–
(1) Lire Bernard Lewis, Que s’est-il passé ? L’islam, l’Occident et la modernité. Gallimard, coll. « Le Débat », Paris, 2002.
LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/04/ARKOUN/10033
Why? Because we’re a mean, nasty, vicious, take no prisoners kind of intolerant bastards, that’s why.
So you’re better off not screwing with us, capice.
Ask that French meat puppet Saddam Hussein if ya got any doubts. And we like our women with a lot less body hair, too.
hey, did you know that Norway has a waiting list for prison?
Bush practicing eugenics in Iraq is the craziest thing I have heard so far in this thread. Maybe ‘ol Saddam was practicing eugenics, and I know that Vichy France certainly was practicing eugenics from 1940-45. But if you have some concrete evidence, other than some whack-job of a delusional French academic spouting off unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, I would certainly be interested in reading about it.
Kodiak,
Your introduction of eugenics as a stick to beat the Americans is plainly incorrect. This is the first time that I have heard that race science is a factor in US foreign policy.
Of course one of the first theorists of race was French. Count Arthur de Gobineau (a name redolent of a nostril manufactory) wrote “An Essay on The Inequality of Human Races” between 1853 and 1855, stating that whites were superior to blacks or yellows (his terms). He developed the theory of Aryanism during his work as a diplomat in Iran for King Louis Philippe.
Contemporary French are more likely to vote for far-right racist parties like the National Front, unlike their British or American counterparts. If I followed your argument, I would infer that there was a permanent stain of racism in the French character.
But I don’t, because I remain sceptical about the identification of national characteristics.
Still, could you explain this?
To D2D & Philip Chaston
Please accept my apology for my poorly constructed sentence-building in English.
Goes without saying I didn’t mean the illegal occupying forces were actually exercising eugenics -or anything close to that- on the illegally occupied soil of Iraq.
I was just trying to make a metaphore (a parallel, a comparison, an extrapolation…) between what 1920 Unitedstaters were doing to actual human beings (Blacks, Chinese…) & what 2003 Unitedstaters are doing to present-day collective bodies commonly denominated as States (Nicaragua, Chile, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Arhentine, Syria, France, Germany, Cuba…).
Please note I don’t mean that any of the 10 above-mentioned collective bodies is NOT a rogue State (according to Unitedstatish terminology prevailing in the roguest, thuggest State of all).
Kodiak.
Kodiak,
You are conflating racism by individuals with official policy of the United States. You are wrong, and your theory is nuts. Time for ya to catch a taxi back to planet Earth.
Regardless of what you believe the United States, unlike Vichy France, has never shipped anyone to a extermination camp because of their race. France needs to come to terms with its own sins before it starts judging other nations.
Dear D2D,
Thanx for your comment but YOU are wrong.
1/ US racism is not limited to random mean individuals: US states have did write racist bits (black & white…) on official texts >>> please attend history classes.
2/ This theory is not: a/ mine, b/ a theory but a fact, c/ nuts but well valid & recognised.
3/ The US Indian policy was worth Vichy’s policy regarding Jews. I think the comparison may well be feasible.