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112 Gripes About the French

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Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#61

Post by orwin »

fvdessen wrote: post #48
tasogare wrote: post #31

Did the book address the topic of rapes by US soldiers? This was a big issue after liberation, and still is a major issue near US bases nowadays (in particular Okinawa).

No. 75 years later this topic is still taboo

It's honestly not taboo anymore. Multiple history books have breached the subject, and we can now say that while they were rape from US soldiers, the sentiments were inflated because the liberation let a lot of locals distraught, angry an hungry. Also US military had a bad reputation for multiple other reasons (some racism maybe, but also the bombing and the fact that they sort of replaced the germans as an occupation forces (it was temporary however). When looking for stories about US rapes, historian saw that the sotries were extremely localized (None came from brittany, although this was one of the first liberated area and also a poor one).

Also, US soldier were rude, assertive and agressive towards women, and this was caused by racism and too much ego (French woman image from back home and stories from WW1, and their own self-inflated image)

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#62

Post by bkirkby »

adamjb wrote: post #30
drglitch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a more appropriate word to describe this? Honest question as a non-native English speaker. Seems like this is a commonly used term/usage: https://www.google.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/us/amp...

"Offended" would be my suggestion. "Triggered" is only really used in this sense as part of bad faith culture war discourse, mocking the idea of trigger warnings.

I've heard advocates of trigger warnings share their lived experience by talking about what "triggered" them, using that word specifically.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#63

Post by [deleted] »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #54
411111111111111 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that's been mostly sweeped under the rug wrt WW2 is that Russia both did the most damage to the German army and paid the highest price. America only started their offensive after Russia started winning and likely only wanted to deny them Europe. And the heavy casualties in the war likely caused Russia to fold on the cold war as well, there were just not enough able men after the war to create families w…

No western democracy could have paid the human cost the USSR did. Arguably they only paid such a high price due to their industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their economic and political system. It's often said that the war was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Soviet blood.

[deleted]

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#64

Post by afarrell »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #50
johnchristopher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again? A good starting point would be to stop using the word "trigger" when someone reacts in a way you don't like to something you say. Personally I interpret it as a way to diminish the other side position by suggesting they don't have control over their emotions regarding some subjects. Not a good start.

? but trigger was started and used by that side themselves.

I’d advise reading the book “112 Gripes about the French” and then applying that same empathy to the people you dislike in our modern era.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#65

Post by watwut »

unishark wrote: post #49
tasogare wrote: post #31

Did the book address the topic of rapes by US soldiers? This was a big issue after liberation, and still is a major issue near US bases nowadays (in particular Okinawa).

Question 81 mentions problems caused by US soldiers. Crimes by foreigners generally cause a lot of outrage, regardless how common they are. I saw stats a few years ago that had the crime rates of US troops in Japan lower than the native population. While the crime rates of immigrants was higher than natives. But one of these topics is politically correct and the other is not.

You cant compare general crime rates of soldiers today, when it is big political problem and army does a lot to cut it down. Up to disallowing soldiers to even leave the base.

With rape specifically after war, years ago in completely different situation.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#66

Post by mbfg »

bumby wrote: post #44
baby wrote: post #10

This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…

> I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different I also wish we had such a book currently on how progressive and conservatives are different

sometimes groups of people are just nasty, bad people worthy of mocking and ridicule. You can't always pretend that situations are around reasonable differences of opinion with each side being honest actors. Each situation is going to be different. the english/french situation may be one way and the progressive/conservative situation may be different.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#67

Post by gnzg »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #50
johnchristopher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again? A good starting point would be to stop using the word "trigger" when someone reacts in a way you don't like to something you say. Personally I interpret it as a way to diminish the other side position by suggesting they don't have control over their emotions regarding some subjects. Not a good start.

? but trigger was started and used by that side themselves.

my understanding is that the word trigger is used in psychology to describe a wide range of traumatic responses. e.g whenever a war veteran suffering from ptsd hears firework it may trigger a strong traumatic response. //victims of abuse can get "triggered" by the presence or even mention of their abuser etc

it applies to a wide range of traumas and responses some of which might be more or less extreme, so it does include some small things: if you ever get a minor burn, the idea of touching a potentially hot surface might make you somewhat uncomfortable - you could call that a triggering experience even though it's not nearly as intense as the other examples.

Triggering experiences are generally considered to reinforce trauma and generate unncessary distress and should therefore be avoided

And so we use trigger warning before movies etc to warn users of potentially upsetting/triggering content such as war, torture, sexual violence and various forms of abuse, it's really not that big of a deal

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#68

Post by [deleted] »

baby wrote: post #10

This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…

[deleted]

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#70

Post by ronjouch »

What's the copyright situation of this book?

Say I want to restore it, clean it up, and publish a nice epub (using as source the PDF already linked in a comment here). Is it copyright infringement, or is its copyright expired now?

"112 gripes" was published in 1945, thus sites like https://www.biblio.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-determine-if-a-bo... suggest it's expired . But also, it was republished in the US in 2004 (ISBN 1-4191-6512-7). Does this make it "freshly-re-copyrighted until 2004 + 70 years?", or is the year that counts for copyright the original publishing date?

--

(More general question: how can I check if a book is still copyrighted? Webpages like the one I linked above aren't very precise and leave room for interpretation; is there something easier / more canonical to use?)

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