The View From 103

Fantastic lens! Just remember to keep the lens hood on, focus on high contrast parts of your object - or on the moon if you're in the dark and want infinity...

http://www.myfourthirds.com/document.php?id=12359

All best,
pup

Jo

If some of these guys, including 75% of those on ATW, hate me, that is just how I like it.

The immediate issue with the French is that they so vigorously opposed the US action in Iraq, not out of any principle, but because half their govt/corporations were on the take from Ssddam. And because they wanted to separate themselves from the Brits and the Italians etc so as to buy peace from the Islamic world and their own internal " Islamic " community.

But I take very personally the way they have mocked the US after 9/11. A major bestseller there ( nowhere else ) was a book called " Windows on the World " which mocked the people who were burned to death in that restaurant in the World Trade Center.

Their major newspapers, including Le Monde have consistenly mocked the US on the subject of 9/11 --which I've not seen in any other country's press. This is above and beyond any criticism of military strategy or Iraq or anything.

Even more recently, the sense of superiority and mockery from that country on the issue of the New Orleans floods has been disgusting.

Now, they find themselves in a terrible fix, a trap of their own making.

To be continued...gotta go

Anyway, they made their situation a billion times worse by:

the large-apartment block model, which is consistent with their central planning model. I do not think this is racist, I think it is stupid.

the highly restrictive labor laws, which are swell if you already have a job but which are hell if you want to get one.

Not controlling their borders. A lot of these people in the banlieues around Paris have no legal right to be in the country. ( This same criticism can be made vs the Brits, the US, Ireland and many other western countries )

Not effectively policing these areas. I understand that the cops would not show up 90% of the time and then would hassle innocent people much of the time when they were around. This is not good.

The French are now the worst of all combinations: arrogant, condescending, ineffective, incompetent, politically immmoral --and weak. All of that and weak, too.

--

None of which excuses any of the crimes committed by the rioters.

Jo

Cut and pastings from the " www.merdeinfrance.blogspot.com " website, which now has been subumed into www.no-pasaran.blogspot.com.

The author is over the top at times, but he does have his facts straight on this vile book, which actually won a major prize over there, and the vile anti-Americanism that thrives in France.

A hate book like this could never have come from any other country.


August 2003

The literary scene is getting ready for their post-vacation kick-off in September and writer Frédéric Beigbeder is doing to do what any self respecting member of the Paris Intelligentsia does: make money off the victims of 9-11. His new book 'Windows on the World' uses the pitch 'the only way to know what happened in the restaurant at the 107th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001, between 8:30 and 10:29 AM is to make it up.' In an excerpt from the book entitled 'Loving to death', published in a special edition of 'Technikart', the trapped office workers are portrayed as victims of the consumer society (and not as victims of those nice well behaved Muslim zealots) who decide to partake in some furious sex as their office burns and crumbles around them. Beigbeder joins the moaning drunk Renaud among French 'artists' making vile efforts at profiteering on the dead of 9-11. In a country where Thierry Meyssan can sell 200,000 copies of a scandalous book, so great is the French desire to celebrate 9-11, Beigbeder's novel is set to be a best seller. Remember, there never was any French sympathy for 9-11



March 2003
9-11 in Paris 11-9-2001 à Paris
Quite a few falsehoods are being spread about America 'squandering' French sympathy in the aftermath of 9-11. So let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there. There was no French sympathy, period. The first images I saw of the attacks were on the TV in a Paris café shortly after leaving the office. As images of people jumping from the Towers were shown a French guy at the bar made a back handed wave at the TV screen and said, 'to hell with them'. All the customers' discussions in the café were along the lines of 'its a terrible thing BUT ...' quickly followed by vague justifications why it was not such a terrible thing after all. Kids were running down the street yelling 'the States are fucked'. In the days following the attacks, graffiti praising Osama bin Laden appeared daily on the ATMs throughout the neighborhood. Dope using French judo champ Djamel Bouras, appearing on the first edition of 'Tout le Monde en Parle' following the attacks, stated 'Why do the French newspapers declare that we are all Americans? Why a minute of silence for the dead Americans? French celebration of 9-11 continued thereafter. Dubya said it best, 'Never forgive, never forget'.

----

November 2002
Thierry Ardisson, ex-badboy of French television and recently self-proclaimed Pope of the Paris intelligentsia and swingers' club circuit, is one of many French phony toughs who take on easy targets. The number of outrageous anti-american outbursts on Ardisson's TV shows (all on state run TV channels) are too numerous to list exhaustively. Here's a sampler:

French writer Marc Edouard Nabe practically had an orgasm on the set while stating that he wished he could have been one of the box cutters used to highjack the planes on 9-11.

Thierry Meyssan, President of the Réseau Voltaire stating that no plane had ever hit the Pentagon, the destruction of the World Trade Center was a CIA directed 'demolition', and all supposed Al-Qaeda terrorist activity is the result of a CIA-Mossad conspiracy.

This past Saturday night, following an outburst by actor Richard Bohringer about how 'Americans' killed all the 'Indians', Ardisson stated that 'the United States was a nicer place before the Americans arrived there'. One can only imagine the reaction if Ardisson had said that the French Antilles was a nicer place before the blacks arrived there, or that Israel was a nicer place before the Jews showed up.



This is just a peek at the current French party line. All of this cultural lesson giving is a bit rich coming from someone guilty of plagiarism. ... / Thierry Ardisson, ex-trublion du paysage audio-visuel français (le PAF) converti depuis peu en Pape autoproclamé de l'intelligentsia parigotte et des clubs d'échangistes de la capitale, est un faux dur qui adore tirer sur les cibles faciles. Le nombre de séquences d'anti-américanisme primaire dans les émissions télévisées d'Ardisson (toutes sur des chaînes de l'Etat) sont trop nombreuses à énumérer de façon exhaustive. Donc, voici quelques échantillons:

Jo

From my source in French-occupied France, who is one of the writers for the indispensable No Pasaran

I was unable to find his links to the execrable French book " Windows on the World " which mocked those who died in the restaurant. He forwarded the following to me:

http://www.merdeinfrance.blogspot.com/2003_08_17_merdeinfrance_archive.html#106137352773566652

http://asmallvictory.net/archives/004133.html
http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_09_03.html#004585

The (original) French version of the book has 3 storylines:

1- a father and his young son having breakfast in 'Windows on the World'
2- sort of an autobiographical "mémoire" of the narrator
3- office workers having an orgy just before certain death

My question is : is the 3rd storyline in the US translated version?

Lets try again with the links

Link One

Link Two

Link Three

This is what passes for literature in France. This is what the standard media ( RTE, BBC, NY Times ) chooses not to report )

Jo

I'd only say:

They're not anecdotes. The guy who wrote merdeinfrance and who now I think writes half of www.no-pasaran.blogspot.com has said for years, incl before Sept 2001 of the extreme anti-Americanism that is rampant in that country's establishment, in its media, and in the streets of Paris.

He, and his cronies, are fluent in the language, ride the Metro and RER every day, and have warned about this stuff, and its widespread nature, for years. Their blog is intentionally over the top at times, but I think his premise is exactly right.

This book won a major literary prize there. I don't think it is an anomoly at all, I fear.

--

Have not read " Atomized "

I do not think for a second that any of the things in this book are true.

The suddenly doomed people, a number of whom I knew, clung to the thread of hope that they would be rescued, they made last calls to those that they loved, they prayed, or they lost it in in sheer terror. They certainly did not jump one another across the desk and appeal for Calvin Klein to save them or whatever.

Phone records, and a (very few ) survivor transcripts bear this out in my building and I believe in One WTC, where Windows on the World restaurant was located.

I think this book is emblematic of a completely debased culture. It could never have arisen from a country like Britain or Italy or Russia or any country with a shred of decency left. I hate to say it, but I don't think it is any anamoly.

---

I've not heard the stories about Irish here cheering the deaths of British soldiers, though feelings ran very strong in much of the Irish American community during the Troubles, esp in time of Bloody Sunday etc. I would not doubt for a second that some of those who supported the IRA were happy when British soldiers died, and could have cheered when incidents took place. It would have been a small slice of the community, but if there were such reports they may well have been true.