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112 Gripes About the French

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Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#91
post #18
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…

Hah. The first encounters between the French and the US in WW II were hostile: The US landings in Morocco against French resistance.

> Hah. The first encounters between the French and the US in WW II were hostile: The US landings in Morocco against French resistance.

I feel this statement grossly misrepresents history. French north Africa was controlled by Vichy France, which was Nazi Germany's puppet regime and did not represented french sentiment or opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#92

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 (IS…

Most US government publications are are public domain: https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-laws-in-u-s-governme...

But determining the copyright status of anything old is really much harder than it should be.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#93
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you are joking? > France is the country with the deepest, most sedimented reservoir of anti-American arguments. Its long genealogy has been well documented over the years, most recently by Philippe Roger, who argues that French anti- Americanism is older than the United States (Roger 2002). https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/meunierces...

France is well know as being the little Russia and certainly a deep reserve of anti American sentiment. Mostly due to media and education brainwashing.

[deleted]

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#94
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…

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…

Russia did pay a massive cost for WW2, but they also paid a high cost due to: 1) their attempt to placate the Nazi’s with their non-aggression pact and attempt to avoid war (which they weren’t that prepared for), 2) the Great Purge in the late 30’s where they executed and imprisoned a massive number of experience officers, which they had to replace, 3) their tactics (no retreat) which resulted in massive encirclements and POWs who were starved to death.

Eventually the USSR learned and with support of the UK and US in terms of materiel turned into a formidable fighting force. But a decent amount of their casualties were somewhat self-imposed.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#95
post #74
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 occupatio…

"US soldier were rude, assertive and agressive towards women, and this was caused by racism and too much ego" Do you regard French and Americans as different races?

What's considered "a different race" has changed over the years and the classifications we have today is mostly along social and political boundaries. Before WWII, Polish natives were often seen as of a different race, today we would consider them Caucasian.

Note how the remaining big race classifications recognized by the US Census are divided up mostly based around areas with which we still have some political tension or heavy political history: Asian, Middle-Eastern European, Latin American and African, and Native American and Native Alaskan, and Hawaiian.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#96

I've never heard of this. I'm reading the original right now -- it's amazing.

This website has serious problems with its voting culture. The serial downvoters should be banned from the site, but they never will be, because dang doesn't see the problem. You can't take disagree, and you can't agree. Whatever, I'm out. Life's too short.

On some sites, folks will up-vote things that they agree with and down-vote things that they disagree with. Or, sometimes up-votes are a mode of expressing emotional-support or communal-acceptance. Maybe that's what you're used to?

Here, folks tend to prefer substance. They'll often down-vote you even if you express a view that they agree with if your comment doesn't contribute something worth reading. And they might up-vote your comment, even if they disagree, if it was interesting to have read.

This is more of a place to exchange ideas than find validation. You're not being rejected on a personal level -- down-votes aren't personal attacks. And people don't necessarily disagree with you, either.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#97

I kind of wonder why it's always acceptable to have general critics about the Frenchs, but take exactly the same discours and replace it replace it with Jews or Blacks, and sundenly, it becomes completely racist and unacceptable.

You can't compare a nationality to an ethnicity/religion and a race, respectively.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#98
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…

> This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe? This is absolutely nothing like the situation with China, which is definitely NOT an ally of the west. Shortly after assuming his position as President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping disseminated a secret internal paper with his most important views and plans, including the 7 biggest threats to China in his eyes. In 2013, this "document numbe…

Isn't the republican party dismantling democracy right at this moment? Also, America is a friend of human rights mostly as lip service, see Hague Invasion Act. And the calling American corporate media independent is a stretch. If these are the most fundamental values to Americans, they do a poor job defending them.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#99
post #95
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"US soldier were rude, assertive and agressive towards women, and this was caused by racism and too much ego" Do you regard French and Americans as different races?

What's considered "a different race" has changed over the years and the classifications we have today is mostly along social and political boundaries. Before WWII, Polish natives were often seen as of a different race, today we would consider them Caucasian. Note how the remaining big race classifications recognized by the US Census are divided up mostly based around areas with which we still have some political tens…

I think you're conflating race with ethnicity and nationality, which makes all three concepts meaningless.
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