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French PM Unreceptive To RMS
An anonymous reader writes "Six month after the publication of very bad amendments to French DRM law proposal, Richard Stallman has been pushed back by the chief of security team of French Prime minister.
On Friday 9th of June 2006 at 3.30pm, Richard Stallman, president of Free Software Foundation, led a delegation composed by Frédéric Couchet (Free Software Foundation France) and Christophe Espern (EUCD.INFO initiative) to meet the French Prime minister in order to talk about the French DRM law proposal and to deliver the EUCD.INFO petition signed by more than 165,000 French residents. Richard Stallman and his friends were pushed back by the chief of security team. "
Yes, a certain element in America likes to have an opinion on France. But in a sense, this is good. It is easy to identify complete morons this way.
In point of fact, what Americans who have issues with France don't understand about themselves is they hate France not because they "surrender," but because in their contrarian nature as per American-directed foreign policy, France asserts itself in precisely the same way as the French would if the situation were reversed.
In the same way the French government doesn't just roll over every time the US government wants to play GI Joe somewhere in the world, the US does the same when it comes to the UN. If the situation were reversed and France was the so-called "superpower," the US government would act just as France does. This reality is so uncomfortable to modern Americans, that it is psychologically blocked out. One would think given the purported values system of the US that we would respect people who had enough stones to say, "No" when the US demanded something. Instead on one hand Americans criticize the French for standing up for themselves and their own interests, but praise certain other countries for rolling over like bitches whenever the US wants to go launch some dumb war.
There are those of us here in the US who experience distinct amusement when France opts out of some harebrained US scheme, and Americans get all wound up. The "freedom fries" incident is just further proof of the devolution of a distinct segment of American society; a decent into dumb simian weirdness; I'm looking for atavistic traits to start to appear so we can identify these people on sight.
You know, as an American I get sick of having to listen to how horrible we are every ten seconds on the net, and I get sick of getting lumped in with a certain ugly element now dominant in our culture. I can understand how French people get sick of hearing this "surrender" shit every five minutes (and I'm sure modern Germans get tired of watching people try to wind them up about a certain period in their past).
Making blanket nationalistic statements against a whole people may be satisfying for a moment, but it can also be dispiriting to those of us in these countries who on one hand acknowledge the excesses of our own governments and cultures, and are kind of stuck with the situation, and get lumped in with the loudest and most obnoxious of our fellow citizens.
And while I acknowledge this growing cloud of Dumb hanging over the United States, I also refuse to accept that that cloud of Dumb exclusively defines us as a people. I refuse to look at the most ugly and obnoxious people in our country, who have in recent years been ascendant and have controlled the debate, and allow others to point to them and say, "That, there, is what the United States is." Because I am here too, as are many people who are disgusted. Our time will come, too.
Believe me, as much as it may annoy you to read tired, worn, cliche, unoriginal, trite comments about France, keep in mind that there are many reasonably intelligent people who have to live here next door to the people who make these idiotic comments on a daily basis. Their aggressive stupidity is not limited to the France-bashing. The France bashing is a symptom of a deeper problem, and these people vote.
I'd apologize for the freedom fries crap except, the people who did that don't represent me. They may claim to and people may recognize them as such but they are, to me, a distinctly alien crowd of people who have nothing to do with me, my interests, or my personal ideas of what the United States is supposed to be about (not that I even grant that the common criticisms of the US are all entirely valid, though many of them are).
Besides, we all know the reality about war - Americans have for several decades now truly enjoyed war...so long as it happens far away and doesn't impact them. I guarantee that as soon as war *inconveniences* the average American by, say, oh, happening on US soil, we'll