Never, Ever Trust the French

i sure hope cj approves of president bush' visit to france , where he recalled : "America's first friend was France" .
a/t president bush , he also likes it when he can have a meaningful discussion with someone such as the french president .
what's cj going to tell his president ?





source :
PRESIDENT BUSH VISITS FRANCE

Bush is a liberal.

Didn't you know that?

I never understood why the Statue of Liberty was given as a gift?

Cuz they like us, dummy.

Actually, i believe it was given as a commemorative gift on the occasion of our centennial, but they couldn't get it ready on time. They also had problems funding it, and it got off to a late start. We got in 1886, ten years after the centennial.

So, I assume the generation of French that gave us this statue are no longer with us. Can we assume the current generation in France are just as philo-American?

I would think that there must be something very inviting about France, since Germany wanted it twice in the 20th century. Perhaps, they have fertile farm land? Situated centrally in Europe? Good temperate climate?

Regardless, France is for the French to enjoy. Who cares whether they can be trusted? What's the import of this thread?

I think the French are more like Americans than any other European people. (We both think we are the center of the universe; that everyone should speak as we do; and that our cultures have something in them of universal applicability) The British seem to be like us but, beneath the similarities of language they are deeply different - and still resentful. (Indeed, unlike all other European nations, they never really overthrew their aristocracy)

Perhaps not, given the number of crackpots like the author of this thread, who keep loudly and irrationally ranting about them.



Germany invaded France three times because of complex diplomatic and political relationships which made it a necessity. In 1870, France was still accounted to be the most militarily powerful nation in Europe, and the Germans were so eager to knock them off, they could taste it. They did, and then they imposed what they thought would be punishing reparations on them--and the French bit the bullet and paid off the reparations in under three years. The Germans developed a rather sour attitude about that.

In 1914, Austria picked a fight with the Serbs who, for all that they are loud-mouthed, murderous bullies, usually kiss the ass of anyone who is a real threat to them. That wasn't good enough for the lunatic Austrian foreign minister, though, and he just kept imposing more stringent terms in ultimatums until he finally found a formula the Serbs couldn't accept.

Austria had a stupidly and casually given assurance of German backing, based on a then reasonable belief by the Germans that there would be no war. They were given that backing, and then the Kaiser, the Chancellor and the Foreign Minister all went on vacation. But Austria finally pushed Serbia far enough into a corner that they had an excuse to declare war and invade Serbia, which is what they wanted all along, and had done for donkey's ages.

This triggered the Russian assurance of Serbian national integrity. So Russia declared war on Austria. Therefore, much against their better judgment (a faculty they rarely have exercised, historically), the Germans declared war on Russia. Therefore, based upon their alliance, the French declared war on Germany (which they had been itching to do since 1871), and hoped to get Alsace and Lorraine back (the Germans having stolen those provinces, fair and square, in 1871). England held aloof, until the Germans invaded Belgium. England, Germany, Holland and France had all guaranteed Belgian neutrality in 1832, so England declared war on Germany.

As you can see, these sorts of things tend to get out of hand. In 1939, England and France declared war on Germany because Germany invaded Poland, triggering a mutual defense pact.

Yes, France has an enviably fine climate, and lots of arrable land, which they have jealously nurtured and guarded. France remains to this day just about the last large nation in Europe which could, if necessary, feed itself independently of imports. That was never really the reason for her squabbles with Germany, though.



The import of this thread, if it actually deserves being honored with so subtle a term, is that the author hates the French because that is expected of all conservatives in this country who let other people do their thinking for them. Otherwise, i can see no reason for this thread.

I've thought much the same for literally decades now. Two great republics, who have opened their doors to the desperate immigrants of various eras, and who nevertheless despise foreigners. Two people of a kind and decent nature as individuals with arrogant and haughty national attitudes, who think they do the rest of the world a favor by their mere existence, and who can't be convinced to drive sensibly or conserve energy resources when it's a question of buying gasoline for the Sunday drive.

France and America are too much alike to ever really get along.

Well, at least the French have the good sense to produce about 78% of their electricity through nuclear power. If we were to raise ours to only 60% we could eliminate all petroleum imports. Moreover we have the nuclear fuel in hand to do it now.

I used to work in the Uranium industry, ob1, so I'm wondering who's supplying the uranium. I understand USA is building 30 more plants, as is Germany, China, and others. There will be a demand that can't be supplied. There are not a lot of producers in the USA and most have pre-sold their product to 2012. And right now, uranium is on the **** list again, so not much financing is being raised.

Do you know something I don't? Please share!

The U.S. has thousands of tons of highly (>>20%) enriched U235 stored at various locations throughout the country, plus thousands more of plutonium. (Commercial fuel requires only about 6% U235, so the potential is huge.) Altogether enough to power our industry for a century or more. There are also thousands of tons of recoverable uranium readily available in the old Atlas mine tailings in Utah.

Our policy had long been to conserve our reserve to keep a steady flow coming from the mining/processing industry, however most of that is now shut down. There will be some high costs attendant to the resumption of production resulting from new plant construction, however that is a one-time thing.

There is a rapid consolidation of existing U.S. nuclear plants ongoing -- the top 7 corporate producers now own over half the operating plants and are still buying. They will also be the builders of the new plants, most going in as new plants colocated with existing ones. In addition to new fuel we have enough storage space for spent fuel at existing sites (without Yucca Mountain) for another 70 years or so.

You are correct about the intractability of the environmental issues associated with all this. However these are mostly political and psychological, not real or scientifically a hazard. My impression is that the producers and some quarters of the government) are counting on scarcity to steamroll these issues.

Well, I am a year or so out of date, but when I was involved, I understood the US govt had stockpiled quite a bit. Not enough, though, to supply 30 new plants as well as their current operating ones. And are these 30 plants being built?

I should go back and do some research. I still own some uranium stock - quite a bit of it, actually. It would behoove me to know more about it - or get current, at the very least.

I agree that it's the most efficient fuel source but there is always the problem of the radioactive decay and what to do about it. That's what prospective investors always wanted to know. Cameco had that problem when their mine flooded and the issue was what to do with the contaminated water. I never did follow up and find out what they did with it. I think I left the biz around that time.

I was just at an investor conference (hawking my cooking and medic skills) and it seems that now every junior seems to have one U property, however small. Very inefficient way of operating, if you ask me.

How can you say the French are like Americans, based on how their Muslim population seems to be so alienated from the French culture, and American Muslims maintain their religion, but adopt the American culture (e.g., Muslim students mix with all other students at all levels of school)?

The French, like so many Europeans have a long history that is relished, as opposed to the comparatively short American history. Also, while they overcame their aristocracy ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"; the opening sentence in Dickens Tale of Two Cities and the bloody peasant led revolution), I don't believe they have the American acceptance of multi-culturalism. There might be a reason Mexico celebrates Cinco de Mayo with such glee.

And, like many European countries, France has a history of its version of anti-Semitism. Basically, which was that Jews were the perennial outsiders in Europe. However, the U.S., being such a mixed fabric of people, could accept Jews going back to 1620.

Regarding the British being "different," I understand that that might be true; however, in my opinion, if I was on the moon (in the permanent space station), and astronauts were coming up to join the inhabitants, and the astronauts were not going to be Americans, I'd take a Brit over any other nation's astronauts. My point is that in my opinion, only a Brit can be a substitute American in a pinch.

I understand that in the U.S. there are many people of specific ethnic backgrounds that have an historical bias against Britain. Well, if some people would like to see the Jews "get over" the Holocaust, I think that may apply to others, regarding British history, and how they treated their colonies.

Lastly, let's not forget that Anglicanism and Episcopalean are basically the same Church. France being Catholic may seem nicer to some non-Protestants?

Foofie,
I'll concede your points about some areas of differences between us and the French, particularly as they relate to the Moslem population there. However this was in part shaped by their experience of colonialism in North Africa - colonialism in the imperial tradition to be sure, but also very different from that of Great Britain. The French truly applied (imperfectly to be sure) the theory that all who chose to adopt French culture were French, and this was a distinct difference between their colonial trqadition and that of the British, who practiced more severe forms of racism and divide & rule. I think the long Algerian war and its after effects likely affected contemporary French attitudes. In addition, I believe a pronounced side effect of the modern Social Democratic welfare policies now practiced by the major European countries is a reduced ability of the society to assimilate immigrants, both socially and economically. Internally competitive societies, such as ours, seem to do better at that.

Puts up hand.

This is something which i find that very few Americans are aware of. France invaded Algeria on a rather flimsy pretext in 1830, and the war was very protracted and bloody--some estimates put the number of Algerines killed at one million, a substantial number in those times and in consideration of the relatively small French force. This was just about the first significant act of Louis Philippe, the so-called "Citizen King," although the pretext (an insult to the French consul) had been alleged by his Bourbon predecessor. Most of Europe paid little attention. The earlier Barbary wars were fought with Algerines, but against the Tripolitanians, too, and the first effort was centered on Tripoli, and not Algiers. But the wars against the Barbary pirates subsequent to the end of the War of 1812 and the defeat of Napoleon concentrated on Algiers, and the grievances of the United States particularly related to the Algerines, whom they definitively defeated in 1816.

So Europe took little notice of the French war in Algeria, and Louis Philippe's cronies installed their bourgeois clients as farms and small industrialists on the north coast of Algeria, and the Muslims and Jews of Algeria, who were not slaughtered outright, were driven into the interior to starve, if they could do no better. In 1848, on the eve of an unforeseen revolution, Algeria was incorporated into the French nation as three départements, but this merely recognized the spread of French colonists.

Louis Philippe was overthrown in the 1848 revolution, and was succeeded by Louis Bonaparte, originally as President of the Repbulic, and then as the self-styled Napoleon III. His rule was even more banal and bourgeois than that of Louis Philippe, it that were actually possible, and as the fighting in Algeria had mostly died down, he paid little attention. In 1865, he offered French citizenship to any Algerine who would renounce sharia law, which the Jews eagerly accepted, and which the Muslims renounced. This lead to a split among the then sizable Jewish population and the Muslims, as the Jews were seen to be nationalist traitors, and stooges of the French. Most Algerine Jews eventually emigrated.

However, Napoleon III was overthrown in 1870, and this leads to why all of this is germane. The Third Republic was a very different character of polity than anything which had come before in France. The members of the bourgeoisie who had not schemed with and profited from Louis Philippe and Napoleon III were quick to renounce any notion of monarchy or empire, and to at least superficially embrace the notion of the working class as their brethren. The army became the supreme, unsullied symbol of the nation, and educators became the vanguard of the reform of French society. This quickly lead to the adoption of the notion of la mission civilizatrice--the civilizing mission--and it was first applied in Algeria, when Jews automatically became citizens, but Muslims were still required to renounce sharia. But the principle more or less "came in on the ground" in the rest of the French colonial empire. Berbers of Morocco, blacks of Sénégal and the other west African colonies, the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians--all of them were treated as French citizens, and it was determined to educate all the citizens of colonies as were the children of the French themselves. France became the metropole, the beacon of civilization, learning and progress. The citizens of colonies were encouraged to strive toward emulation of the great civilized light of France, and encouraged to actually come to France to be educated or trained. Ho Chi Minh, for example, attended university in France, and in the United States at the expense of the French government, and joined the communist party in France.

It is appalling to me how ignorant Americans are of the world's history, and even more appalling in how they show it. Berbers of North Africa and black Africans of West Africa fought in their tens of thousands in colonial divisions in France in the 1914-18 war. French colonial troops landed in Italy with the United Nations army in the Second World War, and some later landed in the south of France in the invasion which was staged just after the Normandy invasion. Muslims and black Africans died in their thousands fighting in defense of France, and they began coming to live in France after 1870, in an ever increasing flow. Most of the Muslims of France are French citizens, most of them were born in France or in overseas departments in which they were considered French citizens by the French government, and by most of the French people (except for right-wingnut crackpots like Bardot). They are French, many of them for several generations.

(Villers-Bretonneux, France)
I stood alone at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial and I felt very humble and very proud. The lawns were immaculate. The red and white flowers bloomed with life from the manicured garden beds. The plain white tombstones seemingly ran forever in perfectly straight lines. Each represented a young man chopped down in his prime and so, so far from home. Each represented a son and a grandson. Some slightly older probably represented a husband and a father as well.

I read so many of those headstones and wandered up and down the rows in a trance. Behind stood an imposing tower, two flagpoles with the Australian and French flags drooped limply and flanked by two huge granite walls with over 10,000 names - many bodies that were never found or identified.

I didn't leave till lunchtime and couldn't drive further than the unassuming village of Villers-Bretonneux. Lovingly called "VB", it seemed more Australian than Australia. The main street is Rue de Melbourne and one of the main eateries is Restaurant de Kangarou. The school had been built by donations from Victoria. Nearly everywhere had some sense of Australiana. Signs everywhere remind the villagers N'oublions jamais l'Australie - Never forget Australia.

Nothing new here, Foofie is doing that all the time..

Your uranium goes primarily to China.

Very interesting and well-focused story Setanta, particularly regarding the changes attendant to the establishment of the Third Republic (the first president of which was named McMahon). Thanks. I also had in mind the distinct patterns of French colonization in North American as I wrote my bit.

I also recall our naval operations in the Indian Ocean during the late 1980s. When things got hot the Brits would send down an Admiral who would hold a press conference touting Allied cooperation on the single British destroyer there. The French navy was present with an aircraft carrier (Foch or Clemenceau in those days), modern logistics ships (we refuelled from them routinely) and a squadron of destroyers. We worked together almost as a matter of routine, but never held a single press conference.