Those French!

"But it's also important to recognize that when the U.S. govt.
decides to carry out a "shock and awe" bombing campaign to
start a war or when they decide to fight a major military
campaign inside of Falluja, they are making decisions where
there is, statistically speaking, 100% chance of high
civilian casualties."

I don't like to jump into this political crap, but where else are we
supposed to fight? Should the US have instead said, "Bring all your
bad guys out to this site 10 miles out of town so nobody else gets hurt
- high noon". You fight where the fight is. You make best guesses
based on available information as to where your attacks will be most
effective at getting to the enemy. To say that they "decided" to fight
in a town is stupid.

Funny, this happens to me almost daily: I speak perfect French, and yet
a French person will respond to me in English. I think it's because I
haven't lived all my life here, so I do not respond the way they
think a French person should.

I've only found that to be true in Paris; elsewhere, people at least have an
amusing time watching me struggle with my extremely-limited French, and will
generally answer back in French. Paris is a different kind of place from the
rest of France; if you want to see abuse, hang around in a hotel lobby and
watch how they skewer "guests" from elsewhere in France. The way French is
spoken in the Paris region is a bit different, and I'm told it takes many
years before a French person can pass for Parisien.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


wrote in message
oups.com...


h squared a écrit :
Sandy wrote:

So when I say "No hablo espagnol" - that means I am fluent ? Sorry, I
just
don't hablo. But I can get that much across. Then, it's time to find
yet
another language in common.

i'm sorry, i meant that my boyfriend asked a french person in the french
language where the bakery was. my boyfriend said "je cherche une
boulangerie". the french person replied to him "i don't speak english"

Funny, this happens to me almost daily: I speak perfect French, and yet
a French person will respond to me in English. I think it's because
I haven't lived all my life here, so I do not respond the way they
think
a French person should.

I've already warned my wife that this will happen to her when we're
over
in the US next month. For example, she told a couple from Texas that
we would be over there to visit someone in the "big house" and they
had no clue what she was talking about. Basically, people don't expect
idiomatic expressions from a non native speaker.

-ilan

Of course, that is very recent. But by "will they never get over
WWII?," I was asking if they will ever forgive themselves (and stop
resenting us) for needing our military power during WWII. It is one
thing not to have the ability to take a stand against the Germans, and
quite another, during peace-time, to take a stand against us
(especially in that their attitude about us and Iraq is rather
popular). The two really cannot be compared.

What they'll never get over are the Americans who go to France and, when
traveling in groups of more than 3 or 4, proclaim loudly enough for others
to hear that the French should be more appreciated that we saved their butts
in WWII. I've never picked up any resentment towards needing help, just
resentment towards obnoxious people. I've been in such settings; I don't
know why perfectly reasonable people become mean-spirited near-bigots in
groups. It starts with WWII, and then progresses to observations about poor
service (which is usually, but not always, a misconception), and it doesn't
take very long before you're left thinking gee, if people like it so much
better back home, why travel? Travel should be about observing and enjoying
the differences between cultures, not a "we're so much better than they are"
stomp through foreign lands.

Having said all that, could someone explain to me the rationale for when you
do, and don't, get served butter with your rolls? It seems to be somewhere
between 1-in-3 to 1-in-4 meals you get butter, and I have yet to understand
the rhyme or reason. A French native friend of mine looks at me quizzically
when I bring this up, saying he doesn't understand, hasn't noted this. ???

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

benjo maso wrote:

I watched some D-Day documentaries this year and I finally realised
that
without the USA, France would have been under German occupation not for
decades, but for centuries.

Don't you forget the role of the USSR? The turning point of WW II wasn't
D-day, but the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. From that moment on,
at the eastern front the German Army wasn't capable anymore to attack, and
forced to retreat continually. In fact, Germany had lost the war and there
was no way that it could continue its occupation of Europa for many years.
Of course, the French were very happy to be liberated by the British,
Americans, Canadians, etc and not by the Russians, but that is another
matter.


Dumbass -

Most Americans in my generation have never heard of Kursk.

IMO, it's an effect of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was our "enemy"
in the Cold War and the government could hardly give the "Evil Empire"
its due for what it did in WW2. So the Soviet role in defeating the
Nazis is minimized in our secondary school history classes.

When I discovered that, I got a little bitter at the propoganda I'd
been fed and read as much as I could about the Eastern Front.

Goddamm Government. When the monumental Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk
were happening, they dominated the newspaper headlines here in the
United States even at the expense of stories of the lesser conflicts in
the Pacific theater. People knew what was at stake. Then they
propogandize us. Truth is hardly sacred in this country.


thanks,

K. Gringioni.

"Mike Jacoubowsky" wrote in message
m...
Having said all that, could someone explain to me the rationale for when
you do, and don't, get served butter with your rolls? It seems to be
somewhere between 1-in-3 to 1-in-4 meals you get butter, and I have yet to
understand the rhyme or reason. A French native friend of mine looks at me
quizzically when I bring this up, saying he doesn't understand, hasn't
noted this. ???

My experience with bread and butter in France is:

With breakfast: yes.
With the bread before your meal: no, traditionally not. You're supposed to
clean your plate after the salad with it. Dutch restaurants with French
cuisine will serve garlic butter or such with the bread however, and some
restaurants may have adopted such a custom because the tourists asked for
it.
When ordering a roll: no, because it has probably been prepared.

Probably not a completely satisfactory answer, but it has to be said that
such customs vary within France, also depending on the level of tourism.

a écrit dans le message de news:
...

h squared a écrit :

wrote:

yes, but the guy in my story could have answered the question in french,
couldn't he??

Like I was saying, people speak English to me all the time here.
For example, I was walking my dog when she was a tiny puppy, and
this guy Jean-Luc Delarue, who is the French equivalent of Donahue sees
her and
says: "Est-ce que c'est un vrai?" which was supposed to be a
humourous remark to the effect that she looked like a wound up
plush toy. However, I didn't smile, since I didn't think it was funny,
and he immediately says: "Is it a real one?" since he assumed that
anyone who understood French must think his humour is funny. I didn't
react to that literal translation either, and he didn't insist further.
Such experiences are repeated almost daily.
----------------------------------------------

Funny, I hardly ever get spoken to in English anymore. But it's true, it's
more likely to happen when I don't act French than when I don't sound French
(like in your story). It may also be that while I certainly have an accent
when speaking French (and make obvious mistakes), my accent and appearance
are not always easily identified as anglophone.

"But it's also important to recognize that when the U.S. govt.
decides to carry out a "shock and awe" bombing campaign to
start a war or when they decide to fight a major military
campaign inside of Falluja, they are making decisions where
there is, statistically speaking, 100% chance of high
civilian casualties."

I don't like to jump into this political crap, but where else are we
supposed to fight? Should the US have instead said, "Bring all your
bad guys out to this site 10 miles out of town so nobody else gets hurt
- high noon". You fight where the fight is. You make best guesses
based on available information as to where your attacks will be most
effective at getting to the enemy. To say that they "decided" to fight
in a town is stupid. "

The point is that saying the U.S. govt. didn't intend to kill lots of
Iraqi civilians is a half-truth. It's true in the sense that they
didn't wish to kill Iraqi civilians other things being equal, but false
in the sense that they took actions they knew or should have known were
certain to result in huge numbers of civilian casualties. These
actions include fighting the war itself and emphasizing aerial
bombardment to prosecute it. They could try and argue that the means
justify the ends, but instead they try to deceive the public about
important details concerning both the means and the ends. According
to my ethics, mass killing is only justified if it is in self-defense
or if the overall benefit to humanity - especially in terms of lives
saved - is so much greater than the alternative. Neither of those is
the case with the decision to invade Iraq. The argument that it is
better to fight terrorism in Iraq than inside the U.S. - which you
sound vaguely sympathetic to - is also absurd because a) before the war
their were much fewer terrorists in Iraq than in most countries in the
Middle East, b) Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 despite Cheney's
repeated attempts to deceive to the contrary, and c) most all experts
who seriously look at the current state of Islamic extremism in the
world agree that U.S. actions in Iraq are an enormous benefit to
terrorist recruting. Because of U.S. actions and occupation of Iraq,
the number of people willing to commit suicide attacks is growing much
faster than it would be otherwise; we are overall helping rather than
hindering terrorism with our actions there.

"Mike Jacoubowsky" a écrit dans le message de news:
...

Having said all that, could someone explain to me the rationale for when
you do, and don't, get served butter with your rolls? It seems to be
somewhere between 1-in-3 to 1-in-4 meals you get butter, and I have yet to
understand the rhyme or reason. A French native friend of mine looks at me
quizzically when I bring this up, saying he doesn't understand, hasn't
noted this. ???


With breakfast, the bread/rolls are the main item, so they need the butter
and/or jam as accompanyment. For lunch or dinner, the bread is an
accompanyment, often used to sop up the sauce and (with the exception of
some of the more upscale restaurants) are not served with butter. You'll
also sometimes see butter served with cheese (which is served with bread).
Normands (folks from Normandy) often have butter with their cheese.

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:07:24 +0200, "Jonathan v.d. Sluis"
wrote:

wrote in message
roups.com...

Andre wrote:
Bush killed women and children in Iraq.

You've fallen for leftist propaganda.

Human casualties are not propaganda. They are a crime, regardless of what
political viewpoint you have. Whatever viewpoint we hold, we are capable of
recognizing when someone is innocently killed. Trying to bring the issue
back to left vs. right is unfair to the actual issue - people dying.


Are Human casualties any more or less a crime when they happen under a
repressive dictatorial regime?

Or what about the "estimates" of tens of thousand of Iraqi's deaths
caused by the UN sanctions following the first Gulf War.

Crime or not a Crime?

And either way, who's to blame; Saddam and his Bathist regime or the
UN security council the authorized them.

Innocent people were dying/being killed before, during, and after no
matter which way the situation would have gone. Is one anymore or less
a crime than the other?

The situation is hardly as Black or White as either the Left or the
Right make it out to be.

mj wrote:
You've fallen for leftist propaganda. Saddam loyalists and foreign
terrorists are killing women and children in Iraq. The Iraqis have
declared their preference for a representative democracy over Saddam's
tyranny, which never would have happened without Bush.

You lost. Try not to cry about it.






The U.S. is too smart to allow the implementation of any government in
control of Iraq that wouldn't concede to any American plans 100%. They
spent too much money and time and bombs to let the Iraqis have their
own government. It is a puppet government whether you like it or not.
Anyway what is the point of us arguing politics; you are a soldier who
was brainwashed at training to only listen and agree with whom you
consider your superiors, (which by the way I don't). You are a pawn in
their brutal game; even though in chess the pawn outnumbers any other
piece, but then we would start talking about the power of the common
people and the masses and their rights to justice, and I don't think
you want to hear about that do you? When you say a representative
democracy I roll on the ground in laughter.But I don't expect you to
have any other opinion than the one you presently have, (even though it
is the opinion of your masters of war)..a little bit of Dylan there. I
don't expect anything different from you because you would then have to
realize that you fought for the wrong reasons and that would be a great
shock to the system. The brain is by nature a lazy organ: it prefers to
continue in its thought process knowing it is in error than to change
courses.
Oh and what do you mean I lost? This is not a game; neither you nor I
lost, only the innocent dead are lost.

Andre