Those crazy French!

This might have been a slow newsday for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal crowd, but meanwhile, back in France:

1. Brigitte Bardot has been convicted of inciting "racial hatred. Well, as much as I think she is a loony, animal rights freek, what she said in her book about immigrants and Islam is what a large majority of the French actually think. I don't know how many times I have listened to French people lecture me about the evils of racism and slavery and then in the same breath talk about shipping all the "Arabs" back to Algeria at the end of a bayonet point. Of course, if you point out to them that what they are saying is racist, they will tell you that you don't really understand all the nuances of the situation and it's much different than what the US did with African-Americans.

Here's an ancedote about Arabs and what the French think about them. Many years back, I was travelling around Europe on a Eurail Pass. I just happened to be in Paris and was waiting outside of a luggage drop-off location in the train station, Gare di Lyon, where I could leave my backpack for the day. This was also during the time when France was having some terrorist problems with their Arab population and they were blowing up bombs in the Paris metro on a somewhat regular basis. As I was waiting there, two members of the French CRS, kind of a cross between the FBI, CIA and riot police walked by, checking passports and looking for anything suspicious. Also at this moment, an Arabian immigrant also happened to walk by. Old Habib was dressed like a typical Algerian peasant and looked like he had just gotten off the boat in Marseille and was on vacation in the big city of Paris, happily strolling along, taking in all the sites and sounds of the train station. Immediately, those two CRS officers lost all interest in what they had been doing before and where on him like flies on fecal material. They demanded his passport and started frisking him for weapons. After that, they started to go thru his suitcase. Habib wasn't too happy about this since he didn't see what he had done wrong, but the CRS weren't letting up on him for one minute. Inside his luggage, Habib had all his clothes all nice and folded and very organized. He had even wrapped all his socks and underwear up in plastic shopping bags. The CRS officiers made him unpack every last bundle and dump everything out on the floor so they could poke at it and rumaged around thru it with their night sticks before walking away, leaving Habib there with his suitcase dumped out on the floor. I thought to myself that if the same thing had happened in the US, there would have been CNN there in a heartbeat followed by a lawyer or two to decry this violation of human rights, but since this was France, nobody really cared.

2. Iraq and Nato. Now that Bush has asked the UN for their blessing with Iraq (something the French, Germans, Russkies and Spanish have always wanted), naturally, in order to spread some of the UN mandate around, he proposed that NATO help out in Iraq. Wouldn't you know, Ballerina Jacques decided to rain on his parade. I'm convinced that if Bush had proposed to give France 1 billion dollars because they are such good friends, Jacques would be insulted that it wasn't 2 billion (What! You want to buy my friendship for a measly 1 billion dollars?). Oh well, what would you expect. France is being more and more marginalized, in the EU, in NATO and in the world. They are increasing being seen as an obstruction to peace and security instead of a country who is working for that in the world. There are a lot of good people in France, but unfortunately, they are being lead by a first-class idiot.