It's fashionable to natter on about "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys" and so forth when discussing the French in the far right reaches of the blogosphere, but I've never joined in the chorus.
And the reason I've never joined in is because on this day in 1985, without waiting for UN permission or seeking any kind of world consensus or anything, the Frogs sank the hell out of that floating Greenpeace annoyance, the Rainbow Warrior. Anybody who sends a barge full of hippies to Davy Jones' locker can't be all bad.
I think I'll have some brie.
Speaking of hippies . . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.timesunion.com/underfire/?p=74
The anniversary of John Lennon's death wasn't long ago, and it's brought out some storytelling. I knew you'd enjoy this one, Tamara.
(If you haven't seen the blog before, that's Robyn Ringler. She's a lawyer and a nurse, and she learned to hate icky guns when she cared for Reagan after he was shot. Nice lady. No self-awareness on gun control whatsoever. Considers herself the voice of gun owners.)
Screw 'em (Greenpeace, that is).
ReplyDeleteOne more victory for them
ReplyDeleteIn google:
great french victories
then:
I'm feeling lucky
I'm sure that tongue was in cheek, but I cannot condone this, even if it's fucking Greenpeace.
ReplyDeleteIs your church BATF(e) approved?
Yanking them into court for high crimes on the high seas, or failing that, torpedoing them in combat, while they are trying to ram other lawful boats engaged in lawful pursuits out in international waters is another thing all together.
I can condone it - the brie is good. In college Greenpeace was where you wanted to spend your summer, to meet hot and hairy chicks and prove your Holistic Enviro-Cred by battling the Monolithic Corporate Forces of Evil - it was a stepping stone to harder action like ALF and ELF, it was the Non-Peace Corps for treehuggers.
ReplyDeleteTree-huggers were not a fiction or a dismissive adjective at UC Santa Cruz, they were and are real.
"I'm sure that tongue was in cheek"
ReplyDeleteOnly a very little. :|
...it was a stepping stone to harder action like ALF and ELF...
ReplyDeleteHeh, Gateway organizations.
Smoke a little Greenpeace, next thing you know you are in the back-alley, lying in puke, unshaven, with rotten teeth, mainlining some adulterated Earth Liberation Front with a dirty needle.
Earth First! We'll strip-mine the other planets later.
I'm sure that tongue was in cheek
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with Tam's work?
:)
On the other hand: we're talking about a nation whose largest naval action of World War II was sinking its own fleet in the harbor at Toulon.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, don't find this a difficult balance of judgment.
Well, we can brook a wee bit of contradiction from the land that gives us the glory that is Epoise de Bourgogne - the most glorious-tasting cheese which also happens to smell like 3 day old gym socks.
ReplyDeleteNice!
Unless I'm mistaken, they were the first (possibly only) to go into Rwanda 10 years later.
ReplyDeleteAnd damn straight on the Rainbow Warrior. They did more ecological damage than many of the people they whined about.
I'm going to recant a bit and note that the souper seekret French attack on teh Rainbow Warrior does not appear to have been aimed to kill anyone.
ReplyDeleteAny ELF supporters out there (bleh) will note that their group holds the same values.
Contrast this with the tanks, the cover-up on the incinerary tear gas cartridges, and the cover-up on the full auto fire from the helos during the inferno. What A Cook Out.
billy, that Toulon incident would only tie the Marine Nationale with the First War German battle fleet...in fact, there was a larger (more fatal, anyway) action, in which the rest of the French fleet was shelled by the Royal Navy, because they were, ahem, unwilling to commit against the fascists. Now that right there is yer microcosm in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteObligatory note on French fleets, though--we were awful glad to see them at Yorktown. I know, previous management, but still...there are intellectuals in France who say that Iraqis can't handle democracy. M.Bouilloire, presentez M.Noir.
IMO a little more than Gateway, it's a Threshold Organization... "Stewie sprinkled a light dusting of Greenpeace onto the straggly strands of Sierra Bud-Red that were twisted into the cone of the bong, eagerly awaiting the powerful downward push that would take over his limbs and leave an overall sensation of floating numbness..."
ReplyDeletePCP was also known in some locations as "green" -?
Rather than the Brie, I'd recommend the recipe for Camembert we picked up from the French in Afghanistan:
ReplyDeleteRequires:
small round of Camembert in Wax
Bread for dipping
Whiskey/Scotch
Aluminum foil
BBQ
Directions:
Set the cheese in the foil. Cut a large X into the top of the cheese. Pour in Whiskey/Scotch so it can soak into cheese. Finish wrapping in aluminum foil. Heat cheese on BBQ until cheese, but not wax melts (15 minutes on medium-low sems to be good). Open up foil. Open up cheese like a flower. Dip bread to soak up cheese and enjoy!
It probably works with any wax wrapped soft cheese and flavored hard alchohol combination - experiment and enjoy!
The french informed us that back home no party was really in gear until somebody melted some whiskey-cheese.
Comatus: I'm pretty sure that you're talking about Oran, 1942. Churchill notes it in some detail in his six-volume history, and Rick Atkinson does a pretty good job with it in his North African campaign history. ("An Army At Dawn", 2002)
ReplyDeleteThe fight is notable for the fact that the French navy actually fired shots, and for whom they shot at, but in terms of tonnage squatting on the bottom, it can't remotely compare to Toulon. Beyond that, Toulon validates Churchill's foresight in 1940 when he begged Darlan to sail the fleet to safety, on the admonition that to let it fall into Nazi hands would "scarify [Darlan's] name for a thousand years."
Well, it didn't come to that, so maybe we ought to let him off with only five hundred.
As for the Germans in World War I: I specified World War II for good reason. I can take the WW I German Navy's action at Scapa Flow as eminently honorable. They didn't go down until they'd been fairly beaten in battle, something wholly alien to the fag, Darlan.
Of course the French went after Greenpeace. After all, the hippies, they do not shoot back, non? And Judy, I'd point out that while the French did go into Rwanda, they were implicated in helping those carrying out the massacres.
ReplyDelete"A Portuguese-Dutch photographer, Fernando Pereira, drowned in the flooding that followed the second blast while attempting to fetch his equipment. "
ReplyDeleteWell shame on his happy ass. [/Art E.]
I tend to say "That was on him, now, wasn't it?"
Greenpeace has led some worthwhile movements.
ReplyDeleteBut intending to try to interfere with a sovereign nation's nuclear test (and thus their military tests, which represent to them their national security) with a civilian boat floatilla is just... moronic.
Mining the boat in harbor was kinder than the next option, which would be to put a 5" round through the hull on the high seas.
Not to mention Rochambeau, the Treaty of Paris or French Foreign Legion.
ReplyDelete