you're kidding. "Airbus is a scheme to dampen the influence of the USA" !!!!!! No it's called competition.
The French have seemed to piss off quite a few Americans, so much that in Washington they are calling french fries, "freedom fries."
Should we change what DFK stands for?? Deep Frontal Kissing? Deliciously Fornicating Kiss? Dearly Fermenting Kisses?
All I really hope for is that we retain good relations with the country of Greece.
Hobby On!
GG
Hmm! Let me see. Maybe we also should ban Turkish baths (and also Thanksgiving Turkey?), Chinese takeout, German beer and cars (sorry, no Mercedes or BMW's allowed), and no Russian caviar or escorts.
Griffin in Greenville South Carolina, followed by a very very close second with Terri Dean in Tampa FL. Two ladies who redefine the term "tongue tied" ( : MfSD.
I think we should continue having turkey for Thanksgiving, but then have Reindeer for Christmas dinner and Rabbit for Easter dinner.
Hey come on! How else are you going to explain to the children why there are no gifts at Christmas and not candy at Easter?
The French are laughing at us. I spent some time recently with a wonderful young lady from France & we discussed this whole 'thing'. Nothing French about French Fries or French Kissing!!! Just Americans looking like a bunch of yahoo asses to the rest of the civilized world.
"ally". Disagreeing with US is one thing, sending De Villepin to Africa to actively counter US effort is simply beyond the pale. You don't see Germany, Russia or China doing that. In addition, the report of French companies resupplying Iraqi Mirage fighter jets with spare parts since January in violation of UN arms embargo is just not acts of allies.
Although it might seem to be a far fetch idea, if one looked at the way the French Government behave on the World stage in the last 4 decades with the cynical courting of Islamists and dictators like Mugabe, one cannot totally discount the theory forwarded by AEI's Michael Ledeen: http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen031003.asp .
In recent years since the unification of monetary policy in EU with the establishment of euro, the focus of France, Germany and Brussel(Belgium, EU) is to counter the influence of US regardless of cost and means. Allowing Libya to head UN human right committee is just the kind of appeasement and bribery policy EU persued.
For all the sophistication and proclaimed righteous of Western Europeans, it was the French policy to deny arms to Bosnians to defend themselves. It was the Belgium UN peach keepers who stepped aside for the atrocity in Srebrenica and genocides in Rwanda.
Airbus, EU policy against US farm products, the opposition of the merger of GE and Honeywell are all a grand scheme to dampen the influence of USA.
Jealousy and envy are blinding indeed.
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-- Modified on 3/11/2003 7:19:32 PM
Your revelation of the truth may be hard for many to see, but it is accurate... Rightly or wrongly whether you agree with what the US is doing about Iraq, France's behavior has been dispicable... But they are going to pay dearly when this is over... I imagine that when Iraq is liberated, and many of the weapons of mass destruction are found to have been manufactured with French parts as well as the liberated people remember which countries tried to stop their liberation, France may not be in such a great position to lead Europe..
Spectator,
It will help if you read a bit of history, and not too rely on MSNBC to develop perspectives. We have supported plenty of dictors, and installed them, do you need examples?
I bet without looking it up, you dont' have a foggiest idea to name the citizenship of 9/11 terrorists. All, come from countries that are our allies, not the French, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Jordan, Egypt ...
We rescued the French, and rest of the Europe, not out of kindness, rather to stop Hitler and fight Communism. It would have been a bit difficult to defeat communism without German and French support.
And about AEI ... if you have a $10m trust fund, I don't blame you to listen to them. If not, then I really have nothing to say!
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-- Modified on 3/12/2003 1:20:47 AM
As I see it, the need of US to support dictators in the past 5 decades - the reinstallation of the Peacock throne in Iran, the support of Pinochet in Chile, etc., were tactics in a global war (cold war) against the Soviet Empire. US made plenty of mistakes along the way but the Soviet client states like Syria, Cuba and Vietnam were much worse off.
In case you don't know, most of US oil imports are from Western Hemisphere countries such as Venezuela and Mexico. The French and German are the ones that mainly relied on Middle Eastern Oil. I didn't hear France and Germany advocate democracies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Do they care to criticize the dictators in Cuba and the emerging one in Venezuela? Of course not. The far left don't criticize their own. They just romanticize them. Isn't the 9/11 terrorists assembled their plan in Germany? I thought Mohammed Atta spent most of his time in Hamburg, Germany. You think France and Germany are not friends of Kuwaitis and Saudis? They are mostly profiteers signing contracts with Libya, Iraq, etc. Most of the top companies in France are largely state owned or controlled.
Really, I thought only the British in WWII have the foresight to guard against the design of Soviet Union. If US were not so naive in dealing with USSR, there won't be a Yalta and the partition of Central Europe. It would be easy to only give limited material support to USSR and let them slug it out with Nazi Germany while US fought the Japanese. That way both of them would be exhausted.
If not for the principle of advocating freedom around the world (at least to Western Europe), US could act like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, relied on the protection of the Atlantic Ocean to deter the reach of warring countries in Europe. Isn't that the sentiment prevailed in US in WWI until the German sank the Lousitania?
The Brooking Institutes and the Nation are funding by millionaires too. That doesn't discount their agreements. If that is your rationale, why would anyone listen to professors or graduates of Harvard or Yale? Doesn't Harvard have the largest endowment of any universities in the world?
Actually, I do agree mostly with your thoughts, in the most recent posting. What at times disturbs me, seems to be the media and "talking heads" forgetting that we have "tactical" differences with the French, not "strategic" ones. The value systems in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia where against ours in every way. The same does not apply to France or today's Germany.
I take back and appologize for what I said about your understanding of history. Obviously, you are well read and educated ...
you're kidding. "Airbus is a scheme to dampen the influence of the USA" !!!!!! No it's called competition.
as a way to provide a counter weight to the dominance of US aircraft manufacturing industry. It was pushed ahead mainly by the government of France and supported by the largesse of those governments for over 20 years. I believe it is the only company in the world that were financially supported by four governments. (In the late 80s and early 90s, Airbus was reorganized and slowly acted as a normal company)
The influence of USA derives from its economic, military, and cultural powers. Airbus was clearly a scheme drawn up by European countries to counter the economic and military aspect of US influence. (Boeing and McDonald Douglas, though have many contracts with the Pentagon, are private companies ever since their establishment)
Without Airbus to retain and expand the manufacture base of building aircraft in France, the French Mirage won't be semi-competitive to US fighters in the world market in the 70s and early 80s. The French Air Force would then have to reconsider their decision to use only Mirage. The sales of fighter jets are also greatly intertwined with politics and geopolitical influence. It is/was very important for France to create Airbus.
I am just stating the facts here. It is competition and whole lot more.
Anyway, happy hobbying.
Ok
of course it was a good thing for the countries to build Airbus, to create jobs. That's what any country - including the US - tries to do. It's not especially to attack the US.
When Concorde was built, the US did not have an equivalent plane. So in order to prevent it from being sold and used, they prevented it from flying into the US because it was "too noisy". We did not consider that as an aggression and an attempt to damamge our interests. Just unfair competition.
the US builds car so we should not otherwise that would be an aggression and an attempt to damage US interests.
US produces wine so we should not because ...
So pray tell what do we have left to do that the US would not consider an aggression or an attempt to reduce its influence?
automobiles. The Italian Americans are the ones that create the wine industry in California. The automobiles were created by bicycle manufacturers in Detroit.
French wine makers don't need the government to urge them to produce great wines. French car manufacturers were not organized and pushed by the government to develope their cars.
The trans-atlantic route (London to NYC and Paris to NYC) was the main route for Concorde throughout the decades. At least in this case, Concorde was not prevented to fly into US.
I am not sure you are well versed by the "Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY) politics in US. In Southern California, the TriCity airport (Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena) was not allowed to remodel and expand for over a decade because the vocal opposition of the residents near the airport about noise problem. The federal government in US cannot do much about that. These happened all over the world.
Concorde was too expensive to operate for the US airline industry. Just look at all the money lost in US airlines after the deregulation in late 70s. If I remember correctly, even Japan dropped the use of Concorde after a trial period because of noise and the high cost.
Even the strong economic power of Japan in the 70s and 80s didn't think about creating an aircraft manufacturer. It was simply too expensive a way to create jobs.
Of course Airbus was not created to "attack the US". It was created to dampen the influence of US.
France was a great country and is still a big cultural power. It is the elites in the government and academia that crave for the glories of the bygone era and tries to do everything to counter US so that once again it would be a multi-polar world. That is the stated policy of Chirac's government supported by the majority of members of parliament across the political spectrum.
If that is not a policy to dampen the influence of US, I don't know what is.
BTW, I don't think I use the phrase "damage US interest" in my previous message. Damage is a much stronger word than dampen.
you're confusing the cause and the consequence. We did develop our aviation industry to create jobs. That in turn as a consequence dampened the influence of the US. I agree. But that was a consequence, not a target.
By the way the european had an airline building industries years before Airbus. The first commercial jetliner was a Fokker, before WWI, which by the way led to the creation of KLM, first airline in history. Then after WWII while the US developed Boeing and DC planes, the Brits developed the Comet and France the Caravelle.
So building airplanes is not something new in Europe. And apparently building planes was not such a bad idea because even US airlines are buying them now.
As far as dampening the US influence as a policy, some people think that a world with a variety of cultures, beliefs and customs is best that a world following only one model, the one of the US. Diversity is the bet, IMHO. That's why France and other countries do not want to always follow the leadership of the US. Leadership cannot be imposed. If what you say or propose something that makes sense, we will follow. But if it doesn't we won't. And we do not do that just because we want to oppose you, just because we don't think you're doing the right thing. And it seems that most of the world, altough they are less vocal about it, agree with France.
and BTW sorry about the misuse of damage vs dampen, forgive my poor english, it gets the better of me sometimes.
take care
...and where was the "rest of the civilized world" so recently when Clinton had to go in and clean-up Europe's backyard, i.e., the erstwhile Yugoslavia? Runny cheese is fine but it doesn't load so well in an M-16. The Euromorons should have been able to deal with this "regional" issue themselves.
A little less laughing and better sense of responsibility, i.e., a decline in parochialism, is in order here.
-Hoot.
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In spite of all the super-patriotic nonsense from some of the above members, France is to be credited for opposing the useless, unpopular war about to be started by Bush and his little band of chicken hawks, almost all of whom have never experienced war first hand. Vive la France!!!
Wonder if you will still feel that way after you learn that the US soldiers who get killed over there with weapons sold by the French in violation of a UN embargo to Iraq. Or that much of the technology to develop weapons of mass destruction have made in France logos on it..
I personally do not agree with Bush's domestic policies. Yes he does have alot of hawks in his administration. Colin Powell is not one of them. He has earned the respect of this nation and knows the horrors of war all to well. He is a highly principled man who I have no doubt whatsoever would resign if he thought that this war was morally wrong... The fact that a person of such stature who was resistent to the hawks for so long and now is advocating war, should give you pause to re-think your comments above..
Wonder if your opinion will change when you learn that the US soldiers who get killed over there with chemical weapons sold by the US in violation of the UN ban on chemical weapons.
And as for Powell, he lost all of his credibility with me when he presented new "evidence" to the UN, and most of it turned out to be false.
it'll drive the prices down & I can drink more!