Elite French special forces units to help protect TdF

[eippo1]

Originally Posted by Louis

Wusses - you could have taken them no problem...

That dude looks like he belongs in Gears of War. He might even be the guy in Gears.

[veggieburger]

Originally Posted by 572cv

No, not really, if you really think about it.

The French are our allies, our friends, and these special forces are as tough as nails. Why they get a bad rap in this country is beyond me, except that we Americans seem to have the ability to form prejudices seemingly at will. End of rant.....sorry.

Yeah...this post kind of makes it sound like everyone on this forum is American, and only the Americans make fun of the French military/people/customer service/cigarettes. No and non. Like Black Dog said, just because there's a joke being made doesn't mean you don't love a country and its people. If you want some zingers about the Dutch, I have a jillion of em....and I'm Dutch.

[54ny77]

Inspector Clouseau is on the job.

[goonster]

Originally Posted by veggieburger

Yeah...this post kind of makes it sound like everyone on this forum is American, and only the Americans make fun of the French military/people/customer service/cigarettes. No and non.

OK, but mostly when Americans make fun of the French it is not based on any sort of actual experience or historical context, and therefore especially dumb and grating.

Germans, post-adolescence, don't crack those jokes.

On the security issue, there is also the matter of a major soccer tournament (10 venues, 24 team base camps) in France this summer. Euro 2106 runs from 10 June to 10 July, so there is overlap with the TdF. They are feeling vulnerable, and very much on edge this year.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by 572cv

No, not really, if you really think about it.

The French are our allies, our friends, and these special forces are as tough as nails. Why they get a bad rap in this country is beyond me, except that we Americans seem to have the ability to form prejudices seemingly at will. The French saved our country at the outset. Look up Admiral DeGrasse and Yorktown. Develop a new respect for what they are as a collection of peoples, and what they have developed as a country. Then, carry that sense of discovery on to other countries, and peoples. Especially to places where people have a passion for bicycles, our common passion. Lets find and support the strengths of nations that might possibly envision doing the same for us, instead of tearing down without any particular sense of understanding.

End of rant.....sorry.

Here's my take. The French jokes are jokes. They are funny and have been made since the Germans rolled in to France. The reality is that France has been a pretty formidable nation with which to mess throughout history. They've had their losses, but whatever. Their troops, especially GIGN which is less like a police SWAT team and more like the FBI Hostage Rescue Unit are bad asses. As are most elite troops around the world. At any rate, I think the thing that bugs Americans about the French is that they are very much politically like America is. They go their own way and don't think that just because some other nation said they should or should not do something that they are going to follow along blindly. People got their panties in a wad when the French saw through the invasion of Iraq and chose to sit out that disaster. No one said anything about how the French Foreign Legion was an integral part of Desert Storm or how they have performed in Afghanistan or Africa. Americans just get pissed because GWB said if you're not with us you're against and the French said, enjoy the quagmire... I admire them. I go to France as often as I can. It's a wonderful place. As is America.

[572cv]

Originally Posted by veggieburger

Yeah...this post kind of makes it sound like everyone on this forum is American, and only the Americans make fun of the French military/people/customer service/cigarettes. No and non. Like Black Dog said, just because there's a joke being made doesn't mean you don't love a country and its people. If you want some zingers about the Dutch, I have a jillion of em....and I'm Dutch.

OK, sure. I am glad that there is an international forum presence, and I really don't like being PC all the time, but old tropes about the character of a people can be taken negatively. My dad, who is a lawyer, has a thousand lawyer jokes. No harm in poking fun at your own foibles. I guess that for me, it can be hard to tell on the internet when someone is throwing something out with a nod and a wink, if there isn't a nod and a wink added in.

Thanks very much for adding your comments.

[Uncle Jam's Army]

I guess since my post stirred up the pot here I should make it clear. If you don't know me, and haven't followed my postings here, most of my postings should be taken with a nod and a wink. First, my post was not literal. Certainly, no armed forces are going to surrender to a bike racer.

When France lost to Germany in the 2014 World Cup, I posted here "France surrenders to Germany . . . again." People had a good laugh over it, and certainly nobody took umbrage. BTW, I consider Zizou one of the all-time greats in soccer.

I have been to France and I think it is a beautiful country and the people were very friendly and helpful--contrary to what I expected. It doesn't mean I can't have a little fun at the country's expense once in a while. If someone doesn't find any humor in my post, I'm ok with that. Most of my attempts at humor fail.

[93legendti]

My Dad was wounded twice liberating the French and Belgians. As for my murdered relatives...

"PARIS — Early on a Thursday morning in July 1942, more than 4,000 police officers set out in pairs through the streets of occupied Paris, carrying arrest orders for scores of Jewish men, women and children. Within days, 13,152 people had been rounded up for deportation to death camps. No more than 100 would survive.

The mass arrests, the largest in wartime France, were planned and carried out not by the Nazi occupiers but by the French. That difficult reality, for years denied, obscured, willfully ignored or forgotten, is now increasingly accepted here, historians and French officials say, part of a broader reckoning with France’s uncomfortable wartime past.

The 70th anniversary of that dark episode — known as the Vel d’Hiv roundup, after the arena where many of those arrested were taken — has brought a flurry of commemorations this month, with official ceremonies, museum exhibits, wide news media coverage and an address by President François Hollande. Perhaps most telling, though, is a modest installation at the municipal hall of the Third Arrondissement in central Paris, where the national police are exhibiting for the first time the documents that record the operation in cold administrative detail."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/wo...ath-camps.html



[B]"France's government's complicity during World War II in transporting its own Jewish citizens to Nazi camps is the subject of the French film "La Rafle," which made its South Florida debut Feb. 17 but premieres tonight at Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale.[/B]

Goldstein is one of an estimated 6,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, said Jack Karako, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's southeast office in Boca Raton.

"The film is absolute truth," said Goldstein, who watched "La Rafle" (or "The Roundup") this past November during a Boca Raton fundraiser for the Holocaust organization March of the Living. "They arrested all the Jews on the outskirts of Paris and brought them to the Velodrome d'Hiver. There were many French who were for the deportation of Jews. It was a bad time – very, very bad."

[url]http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-02-24/news/fl-holocaust-film-022412-20120224-19_1_holocaust-survivor-buchenwald-death-camp-rosette-goldstein[/url]

From Yad Vashem:

"At dawn on the 16th of July, 1942, some 4,500 French policemen began a mass arrest of foreign Jews living in Paris, at the behest of the German authorities.

Over 11,000 Jews were arrested on the same day, and confined to the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, known as the Vel’ d’Hiv, in Paris. The detainees were kept in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water, food and sanitary facilities. Within a week the number of Jews held in the Vel’ d’Hiv had reached 13,000, among them more than 4,000 children. Children between the ages of two and 16 were arrested together with their parents. Among those detained were Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Though many Jews had been forewarned of the danger, they had assumed the deportation would only target men, as they had in the past; consequently, women and children did not go into hiding. In the week following the arrests, the Jews were taken from the Winter Stadium to the concentration camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret region south of Paris, and to Drancy, near Paris. At the end of July and the beginning of August, the Jews who were being detained in these camps were separated from their children and deported. Before deportation, each prisoner’s head was shaved, and his or her body was subjected to a violent search. Most of the deportees were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. More than 3,000 babies and children were left alone in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. At the end of August and during the month of September these children were deported alone, among adult strangers, in sealed railway wagons, to Auschwitz, where they were murdered."




I can see why people are offended at some one who dares to criticize the French. Wait, no, I can't.
Carry on...

[goonster]

Originally Posted by 93legendti

My Dad was wounded twice liberating the French and Belgians. As for my murdered relatives...

Thank you for proving my point, which is that none of this is good fodder for jokes.

The historical context, with respect to the French being crap at war = Napoleon (for starters).

[54ny77]

good grief. someone's always offended.

can't please all the people, as the saying goes.

and some are probably offended at that saying.

since when did it become a right to not be offended?

how did people survive all the offensiveness pre-internet? did life somehow go on?

[veggieburger]

Everything I know about the French military I learned from Monty Python.

[Chris]

Oy Vey. It's one of the oldest nations on earth. There's a little more history there than what one tiny tiny percent of a population did in 1942. Are we as Americans to all be derided because of the atrocities committed on the Native Americans?

It was a joke. Laugh or don't.

[gdw]

Lighten up folks. We make jokes about other nationalities and they make jokes about us....big deal.
As to our history with France, it has had its ups and downs. They were the enemy of the British in colonial times until they were defeated in the Seven Years/French and Indian War. Our allies towards the end of the Revolution. Enemies afterward, ever heard of the XYZ Affair and Quasi War? Hot and cold until this day.

[rustychisel]

Well, look, with respect to the latter posts, even the grossest of events or issues can be joked about... you've heard of 'gallows humour', surely? Does it surprise you to know the death camps had their own rich vein of humour? They did.

So we can probably afford to all lighten TFU on occasions.
And if your outrage is buttressed by experiences, reflected hurt or whatever, then let's be a little historic for a moment.

My father was shot down twice, wounded twice, fighting that crap. My partner is German and has written academic papers on the reflection of guilt through nationhood, which is strong and persuasive.

Cutting and pasting a little history to make a little point gets you nothing, unless you're aware the French have a long tradition of virulent anti-Semitism, and it didn't just start with Action Francaise or the affaire Dreyfuss. It continues to this day.

Oh, and a news flash... Napoleon lost, actually, It took an Allied coalition to beat him, much like other more recent military campaigns, but in that case the US didn't turn up rather than turn up late, so you may not have heard. [that was poor humour, BTW].

[gdw]

We didn't have to "turn up." The only threat to us was the army he sent to Haiti and his acquisition of New Orleans from Spain. Fortunately his attempt to take back Haiti failed after his army was defeated, most of the soldiers needed for reestablishing a colonial empire in the Americas died, and we ended up with a big chunk of land in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase as a result. Winners without firing a shot.


PS - Anyone want to buy a french rifle? Never been fired and only dropped once....