Prostitution of the pen and the dark side of the free market

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Four years ago, the government of the French Republic took the lead in refusing to support the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. The French, who had taken a very active and successful part in the first Iraq war, simply did not think that an invasion followed by the occupation of an Arab country was a good idea. That was their prerogative (see

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[fpb]

That remains crap. For France's behaviour to be comparable with China's. the country ought to have riddled the United States with industrial spies intending to steal American secrets; to have paid cash down to at least one American president (Clinton); to have systematically ignored copyright laws across the world in order to develop its industry; to have engaged in smuggling on a hitherto unimagined scale; to have recently threatened an American ally (Italy) when, er, "French" immigrants rioted in the streets of its main industrial city at the behest of the "French" mafia; to have ignored and indeed supported the behaviour of North Korea; and to have concluded a strategic alliance with Iran. If France's behaviour were comparable with Russia, it ought to have bullied all its close neighbours with sudden deprivations of badly-needed gas and oil in order to force prices up (France, by the way, could do something of the kind, since it is a massive net exporter of energy because of its huge nuclear apparatus); to have sent government hit-men to murder opposition refugees in Britain, without even bothering to cover up their tracks; to have butchered opposition figures by the dozens at home; to have invaded Algeria (Chechnya) in one of the most savage wars seen in centuries; and at the same time, to have merrily co-operated with the main sponsor of "Algerian" terrorists in setting up a nuclear reactor; and to have passed classified information about American moves to Saddam Hussein. "No more an ally of the US than Russia or China"? Don't be ridiculous.

As for "protocols of the elders of Paris", it so happens that I know that such publications have been made, sold, and believed. And you do not help your cause by delivering ill-informed and ill-meaning diatribes about events that took place sixty years ago. It was because of the trash you spoke about World War Two, which I notice you do not try to defend here, that I assumed that you had read one of the tracts in question.

[jordan179]

As for "protocols of the elders of Paris", it so happens that I know that such publications have been made, sold, and believed.

I did not know this. Can you tell me more about this claim that the French have been prosecuting a long-standing conspiracy against America (which strikes me as hilarious, given that the French have shown an inability to prosecute a long-standing anything regarding anything, at least since the fall of the monarchy in the first French Revolution).

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http://www.amazon.com/Our-Oldest-Enemy-Disastrous-Relationship/dp/0385512198/ref=pd_sim_b_3/102-4460705-3775365