Prostitution of the pen and the dark side of the free market

[fpb]

Four years ago, the government of the French Republic took the lead in refusing to support the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. The French, who had taken a very active and successful part in the first Iraq war, simply did not think that an invasion followed by the occupation of an Arab country was a good idea. That was their prerogative (see under "sovereign state").

(My position was that I loathed Saddam Hussein so much that anyone who wanted to drive him out was fine by me. I would even have supported an Iranian invasion. But I would not have started to insult people who disagreed.)

The idiot part of the American right suddenly made France the bout of all their hatred. Someone spotted a market opportunity, as Americans do (the French do that as well, but when the French do it, that's evil!) and prostituted a certain amount of historical knowledge in the search for a quick buck, producing some sort of tract which rewrote history with the claim that "France have always been our enemy, but they have concealed it under a pretence of friendship".

I would dismiss this intellectually contemptible and factually fraudulent thesis in as many words, and not even bother about it, were it not that one of the finest minds in my f-list seems to have been taken in by it. As it is, I want to ask how you imagine you can trace a consistent attitude of hatred, and what is more, of subtly disguised hatred, in a nation that has, since the foundation of the United States, experienced three royalist constitutions, five republican ones, two bonapartist ones, and one fascist tyranny, and completely boxed the compass in terms of attitudes, views, and alliances. This is the kind of things that rabid anti-Semites postulate about Jews - attitudes consistent across the centuries, constant vicious subtlety in carrying them out, hatred fertile in invention but completely barren of reason. The French ought to be proud: they have been promoted to the rank of Chosen People, next to that other target of unreasoning, blind, stupid, despicable hatred. In case anyone had any doubts, I regard Jew-bashing as a stain on the face of mankind.

No doubt the prostitute or prostitutes who set out on this bit of free enterprise got out of it what they wanted - money, admiting letters from ignorami and fanatics, and the odd spot on TV talk shows; rewards that serious historians get rather less often. But as we are still free people here, I want to use my own freedom of expression, rather less despicably than the prostitute or prostitutes concerned: first, by calling whoredom by its proper name; and second, by stating clearly that there shall be no pity here for such views. The historical slag or slags who sold their integrity for popular success will not be treated as anything but filth, and anyone who takes them seriously is warned that I will do what is in my power to restore them to sanity.

Comments

[superversive.livejournal.com]

Evidently it is to me that you refer by this violent and ignorant caricature. I do not claim, nor do I know of anyone (‘neocon’ or not) who claims, that France has been the enemy of the United States for centuries. What I do claim, and on strong evidence, is that the ostensible alliance between the two countries has masked an increasing and fundamental conflict in recent years, and that by the time Jacques Chirac made himself the vocal (though only verbal) defender of the Hussein regime, France was no more an ally of the U.S. than Russia or China. The U.S. has not claimed to be in alliance with either of those powers at any time since 1949, and it seems clear to me that its pretence of continued alliance with France is kept up chiefly to avoid the diplomatic consequences of an open rupture.

The idea that I believe in some kind of ‘Protocols of the Elders of Paris’, or find some sinister and age-old conspiracy in the acts of the various French governments since the American war of independence, is your own fabrication entirely.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That remains crap. For France's behaviour to be comparable with China's. the country ought to have riddled the United States with industrial spies intending to steal American secrets; to have paid cash down to at least one American president (Clinton); to have systematically ignored copyright laws across the world in order to develop its industry; to have engaged in smuggling on a hitherto unimagined scale; to have recently threatened an American ally (Italy) when, er, "French" immigrants rioted in the streets of its main industrial city at the behest of the "French" mafia; to have ignored and indeed supported the behaviour of North Korea; and to have concluded a strategic alliance with Iran. If France's behaviour were comparable with Russia, it ought to have bullied all its close neighbours with sudden deprivations of badly-needed gas and oil in order to force prices up (France, by the way, could do something of the kind, since it is a massive net exporter of energy because of its huge nuclear apparatus); to have sent government hit-men to murder opposition refugees in Britain, without even bothering to cover up their tracks; to have butchered opposition figures by the dozens at home; to have invaded Algeria (Chechnya) in one of the most savage wars seen in centuries; and at the same time, to have merrily co-operated with the main sponsor of "Algerian" terrorists in setting up a nuclear reactor; and to have passed classified information about American moves to Saddam Hussein. "No more an ally of the US than Russia or China"? Don't be ridiculous.

As for "protocols of the elders of Paris", it so happens that I know that such publications have been made, sold, and believed. And you do not help your cause by delivering ill-informed and ill-meaning diatribes about events that took place sixty years ago. It was because of the trash you spoke about World War Two, which I notice you do not try to defend here, that I assumed that you had read one of the tracts in question.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

As for "protocols of the elders of Paris", it so happens that I know that such publications have been made, sold, and believed.

I did not know this. Can you tell me more about this claim that the French have been prosecuting a long-standing conspiracy against America (which strikes me as hilarious, given that the French have shown an inability to prosecute a long-standing anything regarding anything, at least since the fall of the monarchy in the first French Revolution).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Oldest-Enemy-Disastrous-Relationship/dp/0385512198/ref=pd_sim_b_3/102-4460705-3775365

[kulibali.livejournal.com]

The French oil company TotalFinaElf had the exclusive contract for Iraq's oil fields should the UN sanctions be dissolved.

While France was opposing the Iraq invasion, they were unilaterally invading Cote d'Ivoire, including destroying the air force of the legitimate government (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526243), and massacring peaceful protesters (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3997885.stm).

In addition, during the 1990s, 60 percent of tropical hardwood sold in France came from the warlords of civil-war-torn Liberia (in John-Peter Pham, _Liberia, Portrait of a Failed State_).

This may not say anything about France's status as a ally of the US, but it says a lot about its stance as an upright and responsible member of the international community.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Boy, have you got the wrong cat by the tail. The "legitimate" government of Laurent Gbagbo had wrecked in a few years the successful state set up by Felix Houphuuet-Boigny with French support, and showed every sign of Mugabeizing the Ivory Coast. The French intervened to stop a civil war which had been caused by Gbagbo's corrupt and tribal policies, and his support for Muslim tribes. And IIRC, the peaceful crowd in question had wrecked the capital Abidjan and beaten up everyone they met. Do not believe everything you read in the papers; let alone the BBC, which is penetrated by Islamic interests from top to bottom. If you really want to hear about French crimes, I could do better myself (Rwanda). But then, it would be wise for a Yank to keep trap tightly shut about illegal interventions in other countries - y utds, que hacieren en Chile? Or about being an irresponsible member of the international community in general.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

But then, it would be wise for a Yank to keep trap tightly shut about illegal interventions in other countries - y utds, que hacieren en Chile?

???

In Chile, we gave money and advice to a native political faction, we did not march our own troops into the country and oust the regime by main force. I suggest you read up on the actual mechanics of the coup that ousted Allende.

Or about being an irresponsible member of the international community in general.

Doubly ???

Most of the trouble America has gotten into has been because we have tried to be a hyper-responsible member of the international community. We have intervened against invasions (such as the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam) which most of the world community was willing to idly watch completed by conquest. If not for us, the Soviet bloc would have captured the Third World during the Cold War.

With no immediate threat the size of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, we are quite willing to take our toys and go back home. This is, basically, what the French would like us to do -- they imagine that they would then have a free hand to reap colonial gains in Africa and the Mideast.

They are deluding themselves: an American return to isolationism would mean that, abruptly, third-tier Great Powers such as France would find themselves the primary defenders of their regions and interests against movements such as Islamic fundamentalism, not to mention the second tier Great Powers such as Russia and China. At that point, they would probably beg us to return and fight for them; and they might find their policy of encouraging American isolationism had succeeded a tad better than might then be convenient for themselves.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

When people brag of their own responsibility, others usually stop their noses. I suggest you ask a few Latin Americans about the responsibility of American intervention in Latin America over the decades. Even when they eventually converted to imposing democracy instead of brutal military tyranny, their bullying ways and imposition of inappropriate free marketeering managed to make democracy itself look odious. The results you can see right now in places such as Bolivia and Ecuador, where the anti-American backlash is entirely local in origin, let alone in Venezuela.

[kulibali.livejournal.com]

First of all, I am a Canadian citizen, which you would know if you had taken 30 seconds to look at my profile.

Second, I grew up in Liberia, and lived a year in Cote d'Ivoire. I still have friends there, and got my information from them, not from any newspapers or the BBC.

I'm afraid that you are the one to have the fact wrong. Laurent Gbagbo won a democratic election that had been fixed by a military dictator, Robert Guei. The French didn't like Gbagbo because he wished to reduce the French economic stranglehold on his country -- thus leading to the French "Mugabeizing" smear.

And the civil war was between the Muslim north and Gbagbo's government in the south. It came about because Gbagbo was _anti-Muslim_, you twit! He riled up the Christian south against the large Muslim immigrant population from Burkina, etc.

You have a strange idea of democracy if you think that a democratically-elected president who came to power through a popular (and peaceful) protest against a military dictatorship is not "legitimate".

And you do not recall correctly about the protests in Abidjan. There was violence against French citizens and business, whose armed forces, after all, were engaged in systematically destroying their legitimate government's combat power. But the crowd in front of the Hotel Ivoire (in whose bowling lanes and ice-cream parlour I spent many a delightful hour) was entirely peaceful and non-threatening. There was an hour-long home video distributed on the net of the incident. The crowd was not threatening the French, who had drawn a cordon of armoured vehicles around the hotel. There was chanting, and singing, and then shots. People's heads really shouldn't be split open like that. It makes their brains spill out all over the pavement.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If I was wrong, I was wrong. I admit it. But don't come and tell me that the Americans did not engineer the Pinochet coup (in a country that had never known a military coup before), when the people who did it at the time are still bragging of their part in it now. Don't come and tell me that they did not play the same game dozens of times from at least the fifties to the eighties, on the principle that a military murderer and thief is better than a Communist military murderer and thief. And if we are to bring in personal experience, I was in Italy in the sixties and seventies when no less than five or six right-wing coups were attempted; and in the eighties, when no less a figure than the President of the Republic, Cossiga, revealed that most of these involved a "secret army" called Gladio, created and financed by the Americans. And since we are talking about France, you may remember that the estrangement between France and the US began when FDR, the hero of democracy, did everything in his power to support Vichy and exclude De Gaulle - who had put his life and that of his few supporters on the line in the allied cause from the beginning - as legitimate representatives of France. In that case as in those of Pinochet and other Latin American tyrants, the Americans simply decided that they knew what was better for France better than the French did. This is a constant of American policy.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

This may not say anything about France's status as a ally of the US, but it says a lot about its stance as an upright and responsible member of the international community

It certainly shows a strong degree of French hypocrisy, given the far less egregious acts for which the French have condemned America. I've also never appreciated the French stance of moral superiority over Indochina, and their continued trade with North Vietnam during America's Vietnam War, given just who messed the place up so badly that the Communists were able to convince a significant number of Vietnamese to follow them as an alternative. And the French behavior during the War on Terror has been despicable, with the sort of short-term cunning and long-term sacrifice of French interests that France has been famous for since they bit at that telegram in 1870. I say "long-term sacrifice of French interests," because it never seems to have entered their pretty little Existentialist heads what position they are putting France in should they succeed in pushing America back into an isolationist mode.

But they certainly aren't as bad as the Russians and Chinese. The countries the French are pushing around are half- to quarter-civilized African joke-nations which probaly need some recolonization anyway if they are to avoid slipping into total anarchy. And they haven't engaged in a wholesale massacre of their own people since World War II, and that was under duress from Germany (another country that really should shut up and get out of the way of our war).

Perhaps France annoys us more than Russia, China, or Germany because the French are not only so incredibly arrogant about their role in history, but (unlike the Chinese) make their claims based on concepts of what constitutes excellence similar to our own. We can laugh at the Chinese idea of being "the Middle Kingdom" -- France, however, challenges us on grounds we have to take seriously.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Indo-China is one place where Americans reaped what they sowed. It is a matter of record that the incoming Americans in 1945 supported Ho Chi Minh against the French, the British and any non-Communist Vietnamese. American government at the time was deeply penetrated by Communist agents, of course - Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, etc. - and ancient prejudices against "imperialism" joined with sinister new influences to formulate a policy that was, in many areas, definitely anti-Western and pro-Soviet. In the same way, General Eisenhower withdrew his troops from Thuringia and western Bohemia for no reason whatever, making a strategic gift to the Soviets which they were far from reciprocating anywhere. Of course, within three years Hiss and White were on their way out and the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall Plan were on; but by then it was too late for several places, including Vietnam.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Indo-China is one place where Americans reaped what they sowed.

Because "the Third World" became such a source of "authenticity" to the academic Left, there has not been much examination of the incredible folly, perpetuated not only by the Truman but also the Eisenhower Administrations (so it was bipartisan), of American support for decolonization in the two decades immediately following World War II.

This support originated not only in outright Communist moles such as White and Hiss, but also in a general American hostility to empire which still exists today (the reasone we didn't really fight a "war for oil," which might have worked better in terms of American interests). Our nation having originated in an anti-colonial secession movement, we tended to uncritically support the anti-colonialists in our first essays at Great Power postwar diplomacy, both under Wilson at Versailles and under Truman and Eisenhower through the United Nations.

This had disastrous consequences. The small states of Central Europe that Wilson helped create were but appetizers to Hitler and Mussolini; the Third World nations that emerged from the post World War II breakup of colonial empires were not only small, and hence similar treats served up for the delectation of Stalin and his successors, but also barbaric, and hence barely able (in some cases unable) to even rule themselves.

We tended to draw analogies between the new Third World states and the nascent American Republic of the late 18th century; between their secession struggles and our own Revolutionary War. We missed the important difference: we were civilized and struggling to achieve liberty; they were barbaric and struggling to achieve local tyrannies. It was this confusion that led to the misguided American tolerance extended to Ho Chi Minh, Gamel Abdul Nasser, and Fidel Castro, in the beginning of their reigns.

The worst consequence of this was not our lack of support for France in 1945-54, but rather our lack of support for Britain, France and Israel in 1956 in the Suez Crisis. Here we took the side of Nasser against our own NATO allies and the only democracy in the Mideast, mostly to curry favor with the Third World.

To salve their pride the British and French have decided now that they were in the wrong, but they were clearly in the right -- Nasser was in violation of the teaty that had returned the Canal to Egyptian control. We gained nothing by this betrayal, and we paid heavily for it -- this is one of the reasons why Europe was willing to trade with North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Indeed, this was one of the direct provocations that turned France anti-American.

The lesson we should take from this: Never betray long-time allies to curry favor with potential allies.

That's the lesson I take from it, anyway.

I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Only I would never have even thought of making such a statement as: "half- to quarter-civilized African joke-nations which probaly need some recolonization anyway...

Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Only I would never have even thought of making such a statement as: "half- to quarter-civilized African joke-nations which probaly need some recolonization anyway...

Really? How would you describe them?

"Failed states" is just a more polite way of saying the same thing.

Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out

[kulibali.livejournal.com]

Heh. If you object to this characterization, then you must accept that France's interference was not justified.

The conflict in Cote d'Ivoire (formerly one of the _most_ civilized nations in sub-saharan Africa) also involved spill-over from the Liberian disaster, financed by blood diamonds and, oh yeah, the French hardwood industry.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

While indeed it was a bit silly to say that France has always been our enemy (if they're our enemy at all, it's only recently), I also have to wonder if, perhaps, France's own motives for opposing the invasion were so pure either.

Standing against what can easily be portrayed as American tyranny and Imperialism is an easy way to create an opposing political block on the world scene. France has a huge amount of influence in the EU, and to some extent the policies that they set, the rest of the countries are likely to follow. They might find it convinient to begin setting the EU on a track towards opposing the United States.

It would, after all, benefit them economically in the long run. Creating an alternative, second Superpower in the world, in the form of the EU, would mean that many smaller countries no longer feel the need to Kowtow to America, that alternative markets exist for goods, and that America, itself, will have to walk a little softer from now on.

Just saying, France is no saintly country either. Had they the chance, I don't doubt that they'd gladly exchange places and power with the United States, and proceed to act in exactly the same way that the US has.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

It would, after all, benefit them economically in the long run. Creating an alternative, second Superpower in the world, in the form of the EU, would mean that many smaller countries no longer feel the need to Kowtow to America, that alternative markets exist for goods, and that America, itself, will have to walk a little softer from now on.

If I really thought that France was seriously trying to become the nucleus of a second, also peaceful superpower, I would cheer them on. The world could use a backup "globocop."

However, I do not believe that the French are realistic about this, and I believe that the Europeans are even less realistic. They are fantasizing about "soft power" while a darkness rises in the Mideast, stretching forth its hand to seize nuclear weapons; they are trying to lever us out of the area while imagining that they can appease the growing mass of Islamic Fundamentalists by throwing them both the Israelis, and their own daughters, as so many sacrifices.

Europe should reflect that the Muslim ideology holds that the reconquest of former dar al Islam territory takes priority over new conquests, and that parts of Spain, the Balkans, and Southern Italy were once Muslim.

If we pull out, we are no longer in the line of fire.

You are.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Sicily was once Muslim. Continental Southern Italy never was, except for a few brief occupations of coastal cities.

Most European countries are awake to the threat of Islam (I would say that Sweden, Norway, Belgium and to some extent Britain and the Netherlands are still in denial). They tend to deal with it mainly as a matter of internal security, on the assumption that the immigration from the third world cannot really be stopped; but action is being taken, and in this field, incidentally, the French have been blazing the way. At any rate, Islam is not the only threat, as has been shown by the recent Chinese riots in Milan and the incredible behaviour of the Chinese government.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Most European countries are awake to the threat of Islam

*hugs*
That is the most reasuring thing I've read in a week.

It's like we're facing the hordes that tore down Rome, but we know about it, and just watching....

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Sicily was once Muslim. Continental Southern Italy never was, except for a few brief occupations of coastal cities.

... and Italy is prepared to yield Sicily and some "coastal cities" to a resurgant Caliphate?

If not, it is in Italy's interest that America kill the Beast from the East in the womb.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Leave us to worry about Sicily. You have clearly not understood the nature of this conflict. There is no army to be defeated in battle: time and time again, the enemy has proved itself unable to withstand any modern army - not even that of Ethiopia, let alone that of the US. But there are a minimum of one billion Muslims. Each of them may at any minute become a jihadist, without consulting anyone except the books of his faith; just as any of them can become as selfless and heroic a person as my beloved friend kikei. The religion allows for both. But the jihadist can happen anywhere, any time, without need of organization. And we cannot kill them or hope to restrict them to a Muslim reservation out of which they are forbidden to go. No, they will live among us. And that being the case, the name of the game is endurance. We must steadfastly apply the laws, refuse fear and flattery, continue in our belief that our society is better than theirs, defend our ways in everything we do in our ordinary life. That is what defeated the Soviet Union, and that is what will defeat Islam - not, alas, in a year or two. But fantasies of facing and destroying big univocal enemies in grand battles are really escapism, attempts to avoid the enduring and grinding effort that awaits us.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Leave us to worry about Sicily.

We very well may, if the French get their way. That's my point.

You have clearly not understood the nature of this conflict. There is no army to be defeated in battle: time and time again, the enemy has proved itself unable to withstand any modern army - not even that of Ethiopia, let alone that of the US.

In some phases of this conflict, there have been main forces; in others guerillas; in others terrorists. Simply because we have forced the enemy down the ladder of dispersal to pure terrorist operations does not mean that some Great Mystical Law decrees that they shall forever be limited to such operations, save by our continuously applied strength.

If we stopped applying force against the enemy, where they live, the terrorist groups would coalesce into guerilla bands, and the guerilla bands into main-force armies. They had both in Afghanistan and Iraq, before we destroyed them.

But there are a minimum of one billion Muslims. Each of them may at any minute become a jihadist, without consulting anyone except the books of his faith ...

Oddly enough, very few actual terrorists work that way. Most work as parts of larger organizations who train, supply, and dispatch them. Terror campaigns, like any others, must be coordinated from some center or centers.

We must steadfastly apply the laws, refuse fear and flattery, continue in our belief that our society is better than theirs, defend our ways in everything we do in our ordinary life.

I agree, as far as the threat from infiltrators posing as civilians (or mad civilians, for that matter) is concerned, but that is not enough to defeat all the levels of threat. You may "apply the laws" as you will, but a re-entering ballistic missile will ignore all man-made laws. Or, for that matter, conventional torpedo-firing submarines, or small bands of raiders landed by rubber rafts, or ... any of the other possible ways the Terrorists could strike.

But fantasies of facing and destroying big univocal enemies in grand battles are really escapism, attempts to avoid the enduring and grinding effort that awaits us.

The existence of terrorist teams does not render the existence of Terrorist State armies imaginary. We defeated one such army in 2003 -- we may have to defeat another such army in this current year.

The war must be fought at all levels.

[kulibali.livejournal.com]

Neither the Barbary pirates nor the slave traders of the early 19th century had an army to be defeated in battle, yet both the US and Britain succeeded in their "War on Piracy" and "War on Slavery".

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

Oh, we can kill them. We can kill them.

Of course, to do so we'd have to engage in the largest act of barbarism that the world has ever seen, mass-murder on a scale that, horrible though it was, would dwarf even the Holocaust. We're probably also permanently damage the habitability of the planet, and doom countless future generations of *every* nation to shorter, radiation-poisoned lives.

But, I'm just saying, we have the ability to kill them all. The United States has the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry in the entire world. It has more warheads than the entire rest of the world's nuclear arsenal's put together, several times over. (Which, of course, creates some hypocrisy whenever the US scolds other countries for seeking to develop nuclear weapons.)

If the Jihadists, God forbid, ever actually got the massive "war of civilizations" that they want, with every muslim in the world rising as one in some kind of horde, they'd lose. They'd all become martyrs. Because, while they have suicide bombers, we have Strategic Bombers.

So, let's hope that they never, ever manage to push things that far.