Tonight I was apaled by a thread that I read on the "traveltalkonline" forum..... I do not post on this board since many month after strong disagreement of moderators policies and strong exchange of words with the owners of this site but I do read the forum, maybe by curiosity, maybe just to still be kept informed of what our visitors are thinking about the island.
The thread is a monument of ignorance and closed mindness to its best! I even couldn't imagine there were still, in 2009, this type of speech which promote hate based of faulty discriminatory's facts... and how low the level of historical knowledge could be!
The thread started as a short, contradictive and relatively negative "trip report". But one or two sentences caught my attention in the first place, and I thought on the begining it was kind of stupid , but never expected some of the comment posted afterward.
Here is the link to the thread :
http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=stmartin&Number=1021250&page=1&fpart=all
I couldn't beleive someone could be wacked enought to put in parrallele the new French nudity policies on Orient Bay and the aftermath of September 11th !!!!.... And neitherless an idiot nicknamed "coco" would overbid the statement by making his/her own claiming the French didn't supported the U.S.A. after 9/11 !!!! Oh boy ! Where those people get their facts??? Is it what they teach to their children?... and you wonder why people are so ignorant growing up, from one generation to the next.
Neitherless I would like to recall, as rightfully did one of my compatriote in his/her response, that France was the first country to react, gave strong support to the United States and propose aid in theimmediate aftermath of 9/11 and that the Frech President Jacques Chirac was the first European leader to go to New York after the terrorist attacks and he strongly supported military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and was the first to invoke the NATO charter!
And some are convinced that the reason the Americans are angry with France is because we show no support, because of course it must be an explanation for the cause to effect. How sad that people could be so un-educated to the point....
We didn't supported the Iraq war because it wasn't related to the events of 9/11 and was strictly motivated by personal agenda and oil interest! Period... This decision wasn't based on our relationship with the Arabs, but on knowledge of un-manipulated inteligence! Our relationship with the Arabs weren't better than the Bush family very close relationship with the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia.. (Saudi Arabia from where were coming from 15 of the 19 September 11th hidjackers...)
We didn't "hate" the American for the Iraq war, we just felt sorry for them, for their choices and for their vote to elect a bloody idiot as President and a greedy manipulator as Vice President! We didn't hate the American, we just dislike their administration, the same way the American at one point in history dislike the French De Gaulle administration (neitherless to suspect that the anti-french feeling in some of the American people come from this period of history and were passed blindly from generation to the next without any consideration of change in the two nation relationship).
And the usual argument " if it wasn't for the U.S. your country would be called Germany"
Oh wow... then , if it wasn't for the French, the population of North America would be still singing "God save the Queen" .. This is bullshit! France and the French are more than gratefull regading the WWII liberation, and it is full part of our history and post war culture... How many of Americans and American children still know about le Marquis de Lafayette, how many of them comemorate his troups who died for one day the People of America could salute their own flag? This is systemantically forgotten by those who like to pour oil on the fire of the relation between France and United States.
Those two countries are friends, their bond is undestructible, for the simple reason that the young Nation of the USA was born out of that frienship...and that the old Nation of France survived thanks to this friendship! That's what friends do, they fight and defend eachother.. it is obvious, normal and understanding that they cannot agree on everything everytime and that sometime there could be some disagreement, but at the end we share the same values of Freedom and Democratie...
It is so sad that some people are still thinking this way, maybe because they are manipulated by ultra conservative ideology, but certainly because of their lack of education and knowledge in historical facts...
Thankfully, I know it is a minority of people thinking that way, you've got morons in every countries, we certainly have our share in France too, but I really never heard such strong anti Americanism feeling equivalent to the anti french feeling I just read and witness in 2003 in the street of NY... I know many many many Americans who like France, and I know many many many French who like America, and fortunatly those feeling are I want to beleive part of the majority.
