Smart Diplomacy — French Army General: "Obama's About-Face Shows Deep-Rooted Sense of Contempt for France"

This must be more of the smart diplomacy that Instapundit is always talking about (his tongue firmly in cheek): While interviewed by Le Monde's Nathalie Guibert (merci à Damian Bennett), General Vincent Desportes complained that Barack Obama's about-face shows a deep-rooted sense of contempt for France."

The French general was mentioned on No Pasarán three years ago when, like his American counterpart Stanley McChrystal, the "professeur de stratégie à Sciences Po et ancien directeur de l'Ecole de guerre" was summoned by the authorities (in his case the French authorities, natch), because he had had the gall to criticize Obama's strategy in Afghanistan.

Nathalie Guibert: What with the French and American armies being ready to hit the Syrian chemical sites in the present days, were you surprised by the decision of the U.S. President to suspend the operation?

Vincent Desportes: I was very surprised. The volte-face of President Obama shows a complete disrespect of the United States for France. The day before, President Hollande expressed in Le Monde with great seriousness, he explains why France was assuming its responsibilities. The following day, his great ally puts him in an impasse.

Related:  Oh, America We Have Nothing Against; T'Is Only Bush Whom We Oppose

En français :

Les armées françaises et américaines se tenaient prêtes à frapper les sites chimiques syriens ces jours-ci, avez-vous été surpris par la décision prise par le président américain de surseoir à l'opération ?

Vincent Desportes : Je suis très surpris. La volte-face du président Obama témoigne d'un grand mépris des Etats-Unis pour la France. La veille, le président Hollande s'exprime dans Le Monde avec grandeur, il explique pourquoi la France prend ses responsabilités. Le lendemain, son grand allié le place dans une impasse.

L'armée américaine aurait-elle échoué à convaincre ?

Les militaires ne sont pas les premiers va-t-en-guerre. Rappelons que l'armée américaine n'était pas favorable à l'opération en Irak. Elle ne s'est mise au garde-à-vous qu'au dernier moment, en septembre 2002, quand l'opération est devenue inévitable. Elle est, aussi, "fatiguée" de la guerre après une décennie d'opérations et ne veut pas se remettre dans un échec, comme en Irak ou en Afghanistan.
 
Les grandes puissances ont-elles perdu en crédibilité ?

Si on n'y va pas, c'est évidemment l'Iran qui ne sera plus du tout dissuadé de poursuivre son programme nucléaire.

Qu'on le veuille ou non, les grandes puissances occidentales sont garantes de l'équilibre international. Il est plus gênant pour l'ordre international de ne pas intervenir en Syrie que de le faire sans feu vert du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU. Or, il existe aujourd'hui une dégradation forte de l'image de l'Occident dans la tête de nos adversaires. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme faibles. Et ce qui compte en stratégie, c'est la compréhension de l'état d'esprit de l'autre. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme à la fin des années trente.

On peut dépenser des milliards pour avoir une belle armée, si l'on est pusillanime, c'est incohérent. Le chef de la plus grande puissance mondiale est apparu pusillanime. Quant à la décision du parlement britannique, elle peut faire jurisprudence. La Grande-Bretagne ne peut plus être considérée comme une puissance militaire crédible puisque la politique politicienne l'emporte sur la raison d'Etat. Cela veut dire aussi qu'elle n'a plus de dissuasion, car celle-ci repose sur la crédibilité de l'emploi de la force conventionnelle. Il est important que François Hollande ne cède pas à ce type de pression interne.

Oh, America We Have Nothing Against; T'Is Only Bush Whom We Oppose

So: how's that smart diplomacy workin' out for ya?!

Oh, America we have nothing against; It is only the evil cowboy Bush whom we despise and only his evil/stupid/clueless/reactionary policies which we oppose  

That was a common refrain during the George W Bush years. And around 2007 or 2008 came the solution — in the person of Barack Obama, a man, no a being, of intelligence and vision who would bring back love and respect for the United States.

It is a (self-seving) viewpoint which is hardly seconded by the photo illustrating Walter Russell Mead's Wall Street Journal article.

If I had a Son, He'd Look Like This 'Un, But Not Like Those Other 'Uns

Searching for Perfection 75 Years Ago: "Wonder Boy" has a diet which excludes meat, fish, or eggs, but includes the skin of an orange

…bright and intelligent, with clear skin and eyes.

In its 75 Years Ago section, the International Herald Tribune reprints excerpts from an article showing that the leftists' search for perfection was alive and well (yummm…) right before World War II.

1938 ‘Perfect Boy’ on Special Diet

 LONDON — The “British Medical Journal” today [Aug. 19, 1938] reports the case of a “perfect boy,” who is being reared in the seclusion of a woodland home on a special diet which excludes meat, fish, eggs or white bread. His only vice is over-indulgence at occasional tea parties. Details of the wonder boy’s life are supplied by the psychologist, Sir Leonard Hill. He records that the boy is the son of people of culture who are strict vegetarians. His home is in a wood, isolated from other houses and two miles from any shop. 

The boy’s typical diet follows: — For breakfast, after walking five miles to church and back, he has one fairly thick slice of pineapple weighing about six ounces. For luncheon, he eats baked spinach and onion pie with a thin crust made of wholemeal flour, plus cheese and milk. For dinner, two apples, one orange, two small tomatoes, one small portion of ice cream, in all about twelve ounces, including the skin of the orange. On this diet, at the age of nine, the boy weighs fifty-nine pounds and is four feet four inches tall, bright and intelligent, with clear skin and eyes.

There is nothing to suggest that George Zimmerman is racist; besides, he registered as a Democrat in 2002 and has black relatives and friends

Readers of the Economist push back against the "newspaper's" leftist leanings and narrative:

A controversial case

SIR – The most important circumstance of Trayvon Martin’s death was buried in your article assessing the reaction to the verdict in his shooting: he assaulted George Zimmerman (“Trayvon’s legacy”, July 20th). This is not merely what Mr Zimmerman “maintained” as you eventually and sceptically admitted, but is a consistent account that was verified in part by eyewitnesses, confirmed by the available forensic evidence and believed by both the investigating police and the jury.

Instead, you poured oil on the fire by saying Mr Zimmerman “stalked” Mr Martin. Rather, Mr Zimmerman followed Mr Martin, which he had every right to do.
Roger Chapman Burk, Alexandria, Virginia  

SIR – Legal experts had been predicting a not-guilty verdict in the Zimmerman case for months; it is hard to see how the jury could have concluded otherwise given that the evidence points to him acting in self defence. There is also nothing to suggest that he is racist. He registered as a Democrat in Florida in 2002 and has black relatives and friends, according to his family. Mr Zimmerman was certainly overzealous in trailing Mr Martin, but would he have also tracked a white kid who was a stranger in his burglary-plagued neighbourhood? Perhaps.

It is unfortunate to see the race card being played in this tragic case. Mr Martin’s death was defined as “racial” from the outset, even when facts emerged that suggested a more complicated story.
Richard Robinson, Chicago

Day By Day — Still Pertinent, 11 Years Later…

From the very first week that the Day By Day cartoon appeared in 2002…

France's president assigns homework assignment for the members of his cabinet

Yes, because if history is any guide, that is usually how Socialism turns out in the long term, right? 

asks Hot Air's Erika Johnson with a touch of sarcasm (merci à Valerie, while in France, Janina commented that "Many here have thought about a joke, unfortunately with Flanby everything is possible to satisfy his ridiculous optimism while the Titanic is sinking.").
 

Via the Telegraph:

French president François Hollande has asked his cabinet to describe France in the year 2025, sparking claims that some are living in “Cloud Cuckoo Land”. …

Ministers were given a month to complete their “summer homework” on their “vision” for France in 12 years with answers due to be handed in on Monday. …

In documents leaked by Le Point magazine, Pierre Moscovici, finance minister, warned that the exercise could be “risky” if allowed to turn into “public policy fiction”.

But he went on to predict “full employment” by the year 2025, describing it as a “realistic aim” for a country in which the jobless rate is currently approaching the 11 per cent mark.

Typically bombastic is Arnaud Montebourg, the industrial recovery minister and self-styled champion of “Le Made in France”. He sees his country as a world leader in a wealth of industrial sectors from nanotechnology to rail.

Oh, boy. The French government is wiping their brows over a better-than-”expected” emergence from their latest stretch of economic recession, but Hollande has been struggling beneath plunging approval ratings after hardly even a year in office; he’s been making some pretty far-fetched displays of France’s economic outlook, and I have the gravest doubts that this was really an exercise in defining his ministers’ goals and ambitions for their departments as it was some kind of ill-conceived PR stunt designed to help assuage the country’s deep-seated pessimism with fantasies about their policies’ prospects.

I’m with these guys:

The forecasts received a mixed press, with Le Figaro scoffing at the “idyllic vision” of some, l’Express calling them “self-congratulatory” and France TV headlining its article: “Ministers in Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Right-wing senator Roger Karoutchi, meanwhile, suggested the tone was reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.

Death of Jacques Vergès, lawyer who defended war criminals, terrorists, dictators

Jacques Vergès died on Thursday in Paris 

 reports the New York Times's Robert McFadden of

the French lawyer who embraced anticolonial causes and the role of devil’s advocate on a world stage to defend war criminals, terrorists, dictators and other notorious villains of the 20th century …

 … He died in the Parisian house where the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire once lived, the publisher said in a statement.

 … Is a killer a terrorist or a patriot? Can laws be used to judge good and evil? For more than 50 years Mr. Vergès (pronounced vehr-JEZ) raised such questions in defense of clients who claimed to be acting for political causes, although they were charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, bombings, hijackings and the murder of innocents. 

They included the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie; the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a k a Carlos the Jackal; and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan. Mr. Vergès also sought to defend the former presidents Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was executed for crimes against humanity, and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, who represented himself in a war-crimes trial but died before a verdict. 

Like many of his clients, Mr. Vergès, the son of a Vietnamese woman and a French diplomat, was an enigma. Assassins targeted him. There were hints of ties to secret services, to terrorists he defended and to Mao Zedong, Che Guevara and other revolutionaries. He was a confidant of Pol Pot, the tyrant blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million Cambodians. He married a terrorist he saved from the guillotine, but left her and his two children and disappeared for eight years. 

“He’s a slippery man,” the director Barbet Schroeder, who made “Terror’s Advocate,” a 2007 documentary on Mr. Vergès and terrorism as a political weapon, told The New York Times in 2007. “You can never touch him. He loves the mystery. The reason is that there are certain things he cannot talk about. He would be in deep trouble if the truth came out.” 

 … “I practice the ‘defense de la rupture,’ ” Mr. Vergès told The New York Times during his work on the Barbie case [his defense of Klaus Barbie, the wartime Gestapo leader known as “the Butcher of Lyon” for his role in the torture, execution and deportation to death camps of thousands of French citizens], referring to a tactic of confronting the judicial system rather than working within it. “My law is to be against all laws. My morality is to be against all morality.”

 … After the war, he studied law at the University of Paris, joined the Communist Party and, in 1949, became a leader of an anticolonial student movement. His student friends included Khieu Samphan and Saloth Sar, the future Pol Pot. In the early 1950s, Mr. Vergès led a Communist youth organization in Prague.

 … In 1970, Mr. Vergès disappeared. His whereabouts remained a mystery, although he was rumored to be in Cambodia with Pol Pot and in the Middle East with Palestinian groups. He reappeared in Paris in 1978 and resumed his law practice.

His ties to Carlos the Jackal were murky, but probably dated to 1982, when he defended Magdalena Kopp, the terrorist’s girlfriend and accomplice (and later his wife), who was caught with explosives in Paris. Wanted for many terrorist acts in the name of Palestinian liberation in the 1970s and ’80s, Carlos, who was born in Venezuela, was captured by French agents in Sudan in 1994 and flown to Paris. 

 … After Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, Mr. Vergès, who had been hired to defend other ousted Iraqi leaders, offered to represent him, but the Hussein family chose another lawyer. Mr. Hussein was executed in 2006. Mr. Vergès also offered to defend Mr. Milosevic, but Mr. Milosevic chose to represent himself in a trial that began in The Hague in 2002. He died in 2006 before the case could be concluded. 

In 2008, as Khieu Samphan made his first appearance before Cambodia’s genocide tribunal, Mr. Vergès, representing his old friend, created a tumultuous scene and stormed out after erupting at a panel of judges because documents for the pretrial hearing had not been translated into French.

He argued that his client had held no real power as Cambodians had died of starvation, disease, forced labor and massacres during the brutal Khmer Rouge drive to create a classless society. He insisted that the power — and responsibility for the Cambodian tragedy — had belonged to Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Jacques Vergès … est mort jeudi 15 août, à l'âge de 88 ans

écrit Franck Johannès et cela, "Avec un certain panache",

dans la chambre même où Voltaire a poussé son dernier soupir, le 30 mai 1778, comme l'a découvert L'Express. 

Avocat brillant, redouté et parfois haï, Me Vergès s'était construit avec un rare plaisir une statue toute de cynisme et de provocation, et feignait d'aimer qu'on ne l'aime pas. Il a confié un jour, entre deux bouffées de cigare, "j'ai le culte de moi-même", et, agitateur de génie, il avait réussi à brouiller à plaisir sa propre biographie.

AMI DE POL POT

 … Le jeune homme parcourt l'Europe en guerre, l'Algérie, le Maroc et finalement l'Allemagne occupée, et il garde de ces années de guerre "un souvenir merveilleux". Il adhère au Parti communiste français en 1945 et devient, pendant cinq ans, selon sa propre formule, "un petit agitateur anticolonialiste au Quartier latin". A la tête de l'association des étudiants réunionnais, il se lie avec Mohamed Masmoudi, futur ministre de Bourguiba, ou Pol Pot, futur bourreau du peuple cambodgien.

Le parti prend sa formation en main, et, de 1951 à 1954, il devient membre du comité exécutif, puis secrétaire de l'Union internationale communiste des étudiants. Il vit à Prague, voyage beaucoup, côtoie Erich Honecker, qui sera chef de l'Etat est-allemand, ou Alexandre Chelepine, devenu patron du KGB. Mais Vergès ne souhaite pas s'imposer dans le parti en France, et à 29 ans, démissionne, retourne à La Réunion et s'inscrit au barreau.

"JE SUIS PASSÉ DE L'AUTRE CÔTÉ DU MIROIR"

 … Le FLN l'envoie au Maroc, où il devient conseiller du ministre chargé des affaires africaines, et quand l'Algérie accède à l'indépendance, le voilà converti à l'islam et citoyen d'honneur de la jeune République. Mais Jacques Vergès s'éloigne de Moscou et se rapproche de Pékin, il quitte Alger, est reçu par Mao, on le croise un temps à Beyrouth aux côtés de l'Organisation de libération de la Palestine (OLP). Et il disparaît.

Pendant huit ans. Le Monde du 26 mai 1970 publie un petit entrefilet, "Me Vergès, dont la famille était sans nouvelles depuis le 17 mars, a fait savoir à son éditeur, M. Jérôme Lindon, qu'il était en bonne santé à l'étranger". Jacques Vergès a entretenu sa légende, laissé dire ou fait courir les bruits les plus divers – la thèse la plus communément retenue serait qu'il était au Cambodge avec son ancien copain Pol Pot.

Un jour, Vergès réapparaît. Egal à lui-même, avec ses lunettes rondes, son sourire ironique et son petit costume. Lorsqu'on l'interroge, il répond, "Je suis passé de l'autre côté du miroir. C'est ma part d'ombre". Et d'ajouter : "Je suis revenu aguerri – notez le terme, il est juste – et optimiste".

"J'APPRENDS QUE VOUS DÉFENDEZ BARBIE..."

Avocat, Vergès défend Bruno Bréguet et Magdalena Kopp, les compagnons de Carlos, convaincus d'avoir transporté des explosifs. Il défend le terroriste vénézuélien lui-même ; la Stasi, la police secrète d'Allemagne de l'Est, assurait qu'il l'avait approché dès 1982. Carlos a même dit au juge d'instruction qu'il avait choisi Vergès parce qu'il était "plus dangereux" que lui. L'avocat avait apprécié. "C'est un homme extrêmement courtois. Je pense que c'est un hommage : le combat des idées est un combat aussi dangereux que celui des bombes."

Me Vergès défend aussi Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, condamné à la perpétuité et toujours en prison ; antisioniste passionné, il navigue toujours sur la crête de l'antisémitisme. Il finit en 1987 par défendre Klaus Barbie, l'un des chefs de la Gestapo de Lyon de 1942 à 1944 – c'est pour l'ancien résistant l'occasion d'obtenir une tribune "pour dénoncer le colonialisme". La nouvelle ne décourage pas ses proches. Jean Genet lui écrit : "J'apprends que vous défendez Barbie. Plus que jamais, vous êtes mon ami."

What Would Fellow Law-Suspender Abe Lincoln Say of Obama's Actions?

What Would Lincoln Say? 

 asks Nicholas Quinn Rozenkranz in the Wall Street Journal regarding Barack Obama's decision to suspend the law.

Scholars have debated whether Lincoln exceeded his power by suspending the writ and whether Congress's retroactive ratification cured any constitutional infirmity. Whatever one's answer, this is a case of a president—himself a constitutional lawyer—trying, under impossible circumstances, to be as faithful to the Constitution as possible.

Contrast all of this with President Obama's announcement that he is unilaterally suspending part of the Affordable Care Act. Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama is a constitutional lawyer. And like Lincoln's action, Mr. Obama's was a unilateral executive suspension of the law. But in every other way, the president's behavior could not have been more different from Lincoln's.

Check out the four ways in which Honest Abe's actions differ from Barack Obama — oh, and by the way, if you have the time, check out No Pasarán's previous posts about the 16th president, including the excerpts of the graphic novel biography that I am doing of him in partnership with Dan Greenberg.

Oh, and then, there's this:

As for Republican congressmen who had the temerity to question his authority, Mr. Obama said only: "I'm not concerned about their opinions—very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers." 

What does it matter whether congressmen (Republican or Democrat) are lawyers, constitutional or otherwise? Just like, what does it matter that the (vast) majority of the American people (all 300 million of 'em) are not lawyers (and thank God for that)? You, the occupier of the Oval Office, are not the leader of the people, you are their servant. You still have to follow the law, and you still need to explain your actions 1) to Congress and 2) to the people (however much or however little any of their members may be versed in constitutional law).

"I'm not concerned about their opinions—very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers."

Which brings us back to the quote: did you recognize that mind trick?
It's the liberals' old one-twofer:
1) "Yes, I'm tolerant, and understanding, and (totally) open to debate."
2) "Oh, but I cannot discuss this with you, because you, my opponent, are not an expert/not as intelligent as I am/reactionary/ridiculous/hateful/racist/hypocritical/full of tedious arguments/spouting Republican talking points/etc etc etc…"

French Automakers’ Biggest Problem? French Consumers

Shoppers at the Citroën showroom on the Champs-Élysées were conspicuous mostly by their absence on a recent weekday

wrote David Jolly some time ago in the New York Times.

Earnest-looking employees outnumbered the lone visitor by at least 10 to 1.

 … Down the avenue at the Renault showroom, business was hardly brisker. 

Only at the nearby Mercedes-Benz showroom, displaying German automotive arts, was there much sign of life. 

The dormant French dealerships signify the main problem facing the country’s auto industry: Consumers in France do not seem very interested in French cars. Or any cars at all, in many cases.

In France, vehicle sales last year were the lowest in 15 years, falling below 1.9 million from a 2009 peak of 2.3 million, according to Georges Dieng, an analyst at Natixis Securities. And even those who are prospective buyers often prefer non-French makes. 

 … In contrast to the United States, where carmakers had a bumper year,    France’s 2012 sales fell by 13.9 percent, outpacing the 8.2 percent decline in the overall European market, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Industry officials expect another gloomy year in 2013. 

 … The flagging appetite of consumers is a significant economic problem for France. Its auto industry, dominated by Citroën’s parent, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Renault, directly employs about 220,000 people; thousands more jobs depend on it indirectly. The government, which owns a 15 percent stake in Renault, has called the sector a strategic priority, and plays an active role — some might say actively meddles — in the industry’s affairs. 

The downturn is not France’s alone. In 2007, before the global financial crisis, the overall European market peaked at just under 16 million newly registered passenger vehicles. Last year, the figure had fallen to just over 12 million, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. 

Wherever the market bottoms out, French automakers, like many European manufacturers, have more factory capacity and workers than they can profitably use. And that may be the case for years to come — especially in France, where the job-cutting plans announced so far by Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroën have been criticized by many analysts as insufficiently daring, even as they encounter fierce resistance from workers and, in some cases, government officials. 

 … It is not hard to see why young people would have their doubts about the merits of car ownership. For a start, operating a car is an expensive proposition: Gasoline goes for the euro per liter equivalent of about $7.65 a gallon in France, according to the Economy Ministry, more than double the $3.30-a-gallon average the Energy Information Administration reported for the United States in mid-January.

And unlike the United States, where driver’s education classes are often an inexpensive part of the high school curriculum, simply obtaining a driver’s license is a major obstacle. In France, there is a minimum cost of more than $1,600 for classes needed to prepare for the written exam and the even more difficult driving test. Nearly 1.4 million people take the French licensing tests each year, but only 57 percent pass; those who fail often spend thousands more preparing for a retest. 

The Trauma of Colonialism?

Two rich, glorious civilizations were humiliated and brought to their knees

Manjari Chatterjee Miller writes of India and China in his New York Times column on The Trauma of Colonialism,

their lands lost and borders redrawn, their people forced to endure barbarous cruelty and suffering. Today this bitter remembrance plays out in subtle but important ways in the international arena. 

All fine and good to speak of Asian (as well as African) "sensitivities," "humiliations," and "bitter remembrance" due to "foreign interference", but stirring our heartstrings should not allow us to forget using our brainwaves and remembering some pertinent facts.

Saying, for instance, that

India and China were victims of an extractive colonialism that drained away national wealth

allows us to forget that whatever wealth those regions enjoyed went to the palaces and to the other playgrounds of the kings, the shahs, the emperors, and other members of the various localities' respective aristocratic élites. The truth is that few among the majority of those regions' citizens — the common Han farmer, the common Mughal peon — suffered, or even saw their daily life change drastically (in one way or another), from the "bitter" and "traumatic" "humiliation" of their overlords being foreign-looking white men born in the West rather than members of their own race.

For much of their history, indeed, recent and otherwise, the Chinese at least have suffered far more at the hands of their fellow citizens and of their leaders in Beijing. Remembering, for instance, the (admittedly shameful) Opium War of the 1840s allows the Chinese to forget the 20 million people slaughtered during the Taiping Rebellion 10 years later at the hands of their fellow Chinese countrymen. Remembering Mao Zedong "proudly" declaring that "The Chinese people have stood up" allows us to forget, or to minimize, that never did more Chinese people lose their lives and liberties, that never did more Chinese people endure more "barbarous cruelty and suffering", than under the helm — and because of the policies — of Mao himself.

Westerners would do well to keep these sensitivities in mind

concludes Miller, the author of Wronged by Empire (Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China), but that doesn't mean that Westerners (nor indeed Chinese subjects and Indian citizens themselves) should willingly blind themselves to historical facts nor, in certain cases at least, to the hidden agenda of government officials' "principled" outrage.

• Related — Chinese Outrage: Humiliations' Hidden Agenda

U.S. President Depicted Year After Year as a Chimp, Sometimes Retarded, Sometimes Evil, But Always Sub-Human with Hairy Paws and Tactile Feet

OBVIOUSLY RACIST 

writes Instapundit — with a touch of facetiousness —

Shock: Satirist Depicts the President as a Monkey.

At the link, Bryan Preston proceeds to show which commander-in-chief was lampooned as a monkey — not Barack Obama but Abraham Lincoln (150 years ago). Not Barack Obama but George W Bush (five to 13 years ago).

No Pasarán would know something about depictions of a US president as monkey; over three to four years, NP blogger N-Joe accumulated quite a collection of cartoons from the pen of The Guardian's Steve Bell who did nothing but depict George W Bush as a chimpanzee (or as three or as four chimpanzees), sometimes retarded, sometimes evil (while managing to also mock the Twin Towers, see below), but always sub-human, often with
hairy paws and with hand-like feet, and sometimes quite literally as a chimp or a monkey.

Sample NP post on what Joe called the "throwback propaganda artist":

Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell when not abnormally obsessed with drawing farts, always characterizes President Bush as some sort of sub-human. No matter what the situation, he is cast in the light of a sort of animal without thought or feeling. It isnt even editorializing, its nothing more than hate-baiting of the oldest, most sordid, and pedantic sort.

Unfortunately, although Joe's texts remain, the hyperlinks on the NP posts from 2005 to 2008 are out of date and the cartoons that he linked to are no longer visible. But an idea of Dubya's face, with its elongated monkey mouth, can be seen in Bell's recent cartoon of the opening of the Bush Presidential Library. In any case, Bell's Iraq cartoons and his Dubya cartoons can easily be found through through Google Images…
 
While we're on the subject of the Guardian's Steve Bell, we might as well link to his charming cartoons on the death of Margaret Thatcher. (Oh, but it's all right to demonize a woman when it's one of a conservative bent!)
 
Incidentally, Steve Bell explained the reason for drawing Dubya as a chimp to the Liverpool Daily Post's Laura Davis:

The only reason George Bush as a monkey worked was because he actually looked like a monkey.

I wonder if it occurs to any leftists that just about any human can be said to "actually" look like a monkey, and that no matter what race they are…
 
If you feel so inclined, you can hear Steve Bell discussing his caricatures of US presidents from Reagan to Obama at this link… 

As can be seen in this post's very first cartoon, as well as in the one directly below, bathroom humor, from farts to feces through unbelted pants and toilet paper, is generously laden throughout Bell's pieces of work… (Needless to say, depicting the UN banner as TP is not criticism of the United Nations per se, but of the "disgusting" way that Bushchimp allegedly views the international organization and its ineffectiveness in opposing big bad America…)

"It’s like going on safari": A few pointers for tourists in Paris

I thought I’d give a few pointers for tourists

writes Stephen Clarke.

They’re the kind of things I talk about in my books, especially Talk to the Snail, which has a whole chapter about getting served (or not), and Paris Revealed, my insider’s guide to the city. (You see, the self-plugging instinct needed to express itself somewhere.) So here are some bullet points to help visitors avoid taking a hit or shooting themselves in the foot.

• First and most importantly, begin every conversation in Paris with a smile and a loud “bonjour”. This will eradicate at least 50% of all known problems. In the evening it’s “bonsoir” of course. Even if the other person doesn’t say it, you should do so cheerily and it will show them that you are a well-meaning and self-confident person, and that kind of person usually has a good time in Paris.

• If you want a latte in Paris, and you aren’t in a Starbucks, ask for a café crème bien blanc. If you want a cappucino, you can try, but it’ll cost you, and you might be better off settling for the simpler  and cheaper “un crème, s’il vous plaît.”

• If you want a small beer, ask for “un demi”. This is 25cl, about half a pint. They might offer you “une pinte” – half a litre – yes the French still love imperial measures, whatever they might tell you. Note that there is no such thing as a “grand demi”. A demi is a demi. The waiter will list the beers and you have to watch out for pronunciation. Kronenbourg is “kron-on-boor”, Carlsberg is “karlsss-bear-k”, Heineken is “ay-nay-ken”. The slightly taster beers on tap are Grimbergen (“greem-bear-gain”), Leffe (“leff”) and Affligem (“aff-lee-game”). Worth a try.

• Have a close look at the wine menu. Sometimes, a bottle of wine is the same price as six glasses, in which case you might as well order by the glass.

• Be aware that soft drinks, including mineral waters, cost a fortune. The French almost force kids to drink coffee and alcohol to save money. If you’re offered water and don’t want an expensive bottle just say “une carafe”. They’ll bring you one. And you can ask for a refill at any time. (The same goes for bread, by the way. You can ask for more at any time – within reason, of course.)

• Never break the two rules of a French café. Don’t order a coffee at the bar then go and sit down. There are two different prices, and two different tills, for these orders. And don’t go to a table laid for lunch or dinner and order just a drink. You’re wasting everyone’s time.

• At a café you can go and sit at any free table (while obeying the above rule). In a restaurant, always find a waiter or waitress and ask. There might be a waiting list or reservations.

• Don’t try to order until everyone has decided what they want, or has prepared the key questions that will help them make their decision. Waiters are busy and haven’t got time to stand about while people um and er.

• Don’t mention the word “végétarien”. It will only cause unnecessary panic. They’ll usually have something veggie without realizing it. If not, simply ask for one of their salads “sans le jambon” or “sans le poulet” (without ham or chicken). Just don’t try and be swanky and go off menu. You’ll only annoy the chef.

• Tips. On most French menus there’s a 15% service charge, so tips aren’t compulsory. For a drink at the bar of a café, leave 10 cents. For a sit-down drink, 50 cents or a euro is fine. For a good lunch or dinner in an ordinary café or restaurant, three or four euros is OK. In a smarter place, you’re going to have to leave paper money. Up to you how much you want the waiter or waitress to love you.

So there you have it. It’s like going on safari. You don’t provoke the lions, do you? Obey the rules and you will get excellent service, unless you come across a real rogue beast who short-changes you or brings you two litres of beer when you only wanted 25cl. In which case, avoid confrontation by complaining calmly, as if you’re an old hand at all this; don’t go there again; and make sure via Twitter or elsewhere that everyone else knows about the danger.

The biggest dangers in Paris aren’t the waiters, anyway. They’re the pickpockets and bad drivers. But that’s another story…

In America, We Learn from Le Monde, Most of the 39 Million African-Americans Do Not Have an ID to Vote

"IL Y A 35 ANS, J'AURAIS PU ÊTRE TRAYVON MARTIN."

Quoting Barack Obama is of course (mais naturellement!) how Louise Couvelaire starts her Le Monde article on Racism, the Return of [America's] Old Demons, an article in which we learn that "most African-Americans do not have" an "ID to vote."

Most of the 39 million black individuals in the United States go through life without an ID?!?!

How then blacks — famously — influenced, say, the elections of 2008 and 2012 is not for Le Monde to explain.

While discoursing on the Jim Crow laws, moreover, Louise Couvelaire does not mention that nobody, black or white, is preventing blacks (however many or however few blacks without IDs there are) from getting an ID, nor how easy it is to obtain a simple ID (whether you are black or other, and whether for voting purposes or for other reasons).

Epine dorsale du Voting Rights Act (loi sur les droits électoraux), la loi avait mis fin aux pratiques destinées à empêcher les Noirs de se rendre aux urnes (tests d'écriture, de lecture, taxes, interrogatoires arbitraires dont les Blancs étaient exemptés). Récemment, elle a aussi permis d'empêcher le Texas de procéder à un redécoupage électoral et d'exiger des électeurs qu'ils présentent une carte d'identité pour voter (la plupart des Afro-Américains n'en possèdent pas).

Needless to say, we are treated to a photo of a distressed Obama, profoundly mortified (Barack Obama, qui s'est dit "profondément déçu") with the racist country he must live in.

Howard Zinn, "that fiery author… with an extraordinary destiny… in the service of the oppressed" bla, bla, bla

For the famous author of Histoire populaire des Etats-Unis, writing was a sensible object only insofar that it was put in the service of the oppressed.

Martin Duberman's laudatory biography about Howard Zinn has been translated to French, where Howard Zinn, une vie à gauche (Editeur Lux) receives an equally laudatory book review from the newspaper of record, i.e., Le Monde and Marc-Olivier Bherer — "that fiery-natured author… with an extraordinary destiny… in the service of the oppressed… who was a veritable actor of our times' History" etc, etc, etc…

L'austérité d'un tel personnage pourrait décourager le biographe, d'autant qu'il a pris soin de détruire les éléments les plus personnels de ses archives. Martin Duberman, historien et ami, a néanmoins tenté dans Howard Zinn, une vie à gauche, de raconter l'homme qu'il a connu. Dans la première biographie – en français – de ce bouillant auteur se dessine un portrait de militant au parcours extraordinaire.

 … Howard Zinn, comme le rappelle Martin Duberman, a en effet choisi d'être un véritable acteur de l'histoire. D'abord à Atlanta, où il enseigna, de 1956 à 1963, au Spelman College, une université noire. Il y prit conscience de la violence de la ségrégation et aida ses étudiants à s'organiser. Un engagement qu'il poursuit encore ailleurs dans le sud des Etats-Unis. Mais c'est véritablement la guerre au Vietnam qui sera le combat de sa vie.

 … Ces épisodes forment un palpitant récit que Martin Duberman tâche de compléter en faisant aussi revivre l'intellectuel. Il en dresse un portrait sans concession, rappelant les raccourcis employés par Howard Zinn dans son histoire des Etats-Unis, ainsi que les nombreux oublis commis. L'oeuvre, parue en 1980, n'est pas aussi révolutionnaire qu'on a pu le croire. A la même époque, de nombreux autres historiens ont également choisi de s'intéresser aux oubliés du récit officiel.

"In France, there is an awful economic and social climate": 1.6 million Frenchmen living abroad

In France, there is an awful economic and social climate

says one French expatriate to Elise Vincent as the Le Monde writer publishes a full-page article on the economic crisis leading to 1.6 million Frenchmen living abroad, most of them under 40 and with a good education (five years of studies above the high school diploma), and as the newspaper of reference publishes an editorial, François Hollande's Forgotten Promise to the young.

Solenne a le profil classique des 1,6 million de Français qui vivent aujourd'hui à l'étranger. Comme la plupart d'entre eux, elle a moins de 40 ans et elle est qualifiée (bac + 5). C'est ce profil qui alimente le plus l'émigration . En février, une étude du cabinet Deloitte – l'un des plus grands cabinet d'audit et de conseil – a révélé que 27 % des jeunes diplômés voulaient travailler hors de France, contre 15 % en 2012.

Pour autant, les experts ne parlent pas encore d'émigration massive. Plutôt d'un frémissement. Contrairement aux idées reçues, pour Solenne comme pour beaucoup de ceux partis avant elle, la morosité du marché français n'est pas la principale raison de départ. "Est-ce que je serais restée s'il avait été plus facile de changer de boulot en France ? Non", assure-t-elle. Solenne rêvait d'ailleurs de toute façon. Mais elle concède : sans la crise "sans doute que j'aurais réfléchi autrement"...

"ON NE SAIT PAS SI ON REVIENDRA"

Avant de se décider à tenter sa chance au Canada, Solenne occupait un poste de chargée de communication à l'Institut français. A Montréal, elle sera propulsée directrice de la communication d'un centre de danse. Son salaire y gagnera. Elle aura des horaires plus tranquilles et pourra se loger dans une jolie maisonnette au lieu d'un T3. Son compagnon, ingénieur à la RATP il y a encore trois mois, l'y attend déjà.

\Avec un départ prévu le 5 août direction la Chine, Raphaëlle, urbaniste, et son conjoint, instituteur, sont dans la même situation. Avec les mêmes stress liés au largage des ultimes attaches affectives et administratives : dire au revoir à la famille, aux copains, trouver à qui louer leur T2 bis sur leboncoin.fr. Seule différence, ce couple de Parisiens se lance dans l'aventure avec leur petite fille âgée de 2 ans et demi.

Lire les tribunes : Les jeunes doivent-ils quitter la France pour réussir ?

"On ne sait pas si on reviendra", lâche d'emblée Raphaëlle, 32 ans. Son conjoint a trouvé un poste dans une école franco-chinoise dans le centre de Shanghaï. Elle pense trouver à monnayer d'une façon ou d'une autre ses services d'urbaniste. Là encore, les effets de la crise ont pu être un "accélérateur", pense Raphaëlle, mais le couple avait dans tous les cas des prédispositions à l'expatriation : ils ont passé respectivement cinq et quinze ans de leur enfance à l'étranger.

LES PAYS ARABOPHONES À FORTE CROISSANCE

Effet de génération ? La fragilité de l'économie française est par contre clairement un moteur chez Nadia et Reda, fraîchement diplômés de leur école de commerce. Agés de 23 ans et 22 ans, ils ont chacun achevé, le 13 juillet, deux ans en alternance en entreprise : Nadia au service marketing d'IBM France et Reda dans une start-up spécialisée dans le développement digital. Pour eux, partir est une évidence. Reda dit même n'avoir fait "aucune recherche en France".

  … Mais l'une des raisons qui poussent Nadia et Reda à aller voir hors de France pour une durée qu'ils ont du mal à planifier réside aussi dans les origines marocaines de leurs parents. Même si Reda ne sait pas très bien où classer ce sentiment dans la hiérarchie de ses motivations à l'expatriation, prévue d'ici à l'automne, il résume pudiquement : "Il y a en France un climat économique et social nauséabond..." "Une xénophobie et une islamophobie", ajoute-t-il quand on lui demande de préciser.

Son entourage est un peu désarçonné. Les parents de ce jeune homme d'1 m 80, au bouc et à la moustache soignés, sont agents d'entretien. Ils sont arrivés en France à l'âge de 12 ans et 27 ans. "Pour eux, c'est forcément un peu bizarre de me voir partir, surtout dans ces régions", avoue Reda qui, bon élève, a aussi fait deux ans de classe préparatoire en lettres au lycée Masséna de Nice. Si ses parents avaient des ambitions pour lui, "c'était plus aux Etats-Unis".

My Dad Kept Staring at the Female Teenager

I took my dad to the mall the other day to buy some new shoes (he is 66).

Valerie tells us.

We decided to grab a bite at the food court.

I noticed he was watching a teenager sitting next to him.
The teenager had spiked hair in all different colours — green, red, orange, and blue.

My dad kept staring at her.

The teenager kept looking and would find my dad staring every time.

When the teenager had had enough, she sarcastically asked: “What's the matter old man, never done anything wild in your life?”

Knowing my Dad, I quickly swallowed my food so that I would not choke on his response; I knew he would have a good one!

In classic style he responded without batting an eyelid …………
“Got stoned once and  screwed  a peacock.  I was just wondering if you were my daughter."

The old anti-American strategy looks intact: Germany’s political Chicken Littles have made Snowden's accusations the attention-getting issue in the country’s election campaign

The concern of European allies about American electronic eavesdropping on their citizens is both reasonable and unresolved. What it needn’t be is close to panic-stricken.

Thus opines John Vinocur in his International Herald Tribune column.

France, with its own remarkably effective intelligence services, approaches the question with very controlled and limited indignation. The Dutch treat the issue next to not at all, in line with their model of centuries of success in avoiding controversy that holds no promise of practical yield. 

But here in Germany, the political class is in an uproar. The geschrei is of American betrayal, of a government kneeling before the Yanks, and the forsaken state of the unprotected Deutsche Volk. 

Since Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, dumped his accusations about the N.S.A.’s intrusive reach into European private life more than six weeks ago, Germany’s political Chicken Littles have made it the attention-getting issue in the country’s national election campaign. 

As a result, politicians have been telling voters they are victims of unlawful scrutiny and taking comfortable, sound-bite roles as accusers of the United States. 

By way of resistance, the country’s second most powerful politician, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble — in a sly poke that doesn’t exclude Chancellor Angela Merkel — complained that he can’t comprehend the outrage emanating from both the government and opposition. A former interior minister who intimately knows the world of spying and disinformation, Schäuble said, “My European colleagues are not worked up about this. ... How else do you want to track down terrorist networks that operate internationally?” 

Sharper still was Otto Schily, the Social Democrat interior minister during Gerhard Schröder’s time as chancellor. He dismissed the current German fear of the state as “partially lunatic stuff.” 

Still, this is a hullabaloo that went into the streets last weekend with demonstrations against official eavesdropping. The shrillness of the moment was exemplified in a petition from 32 writers sent to the chancellor. Drum roll, solemn music: 

“We are experiencing a historical attack on our democratic state of law that stands on its head one-million-fold the principle of presumption of innocence.” 

That tone works here. Years back, Angela Merkel said that Gerhard Schröder’s opposition in 2002 to war Iraq was electorally motivated, as was his talk then of “German emancipation” from the United States. He ran and won as an incumbent chancellor that year. 

The old strategy looks intact. Sept. 22 is election day. And there’s a ready-made, if shaky, we-know-best rationale for Germans’ acute sensitivity: their experience with state surveillance during the Nazi and East German eras. 

In more incisive and introspective terms, the federal president, Joachim Gauck, was described last year by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reporter as seeing the country engaged in a continual search for its next big angst. Now the newspaper refers to “partially surreal” notions and “plot theories” to characterize the country’s mind-set. 

Süddeutsche Zeitung pointed toward a fundamentally deep German problem with America. It wrote, “The star pupil of the postwar years has turned into a know-it-all projecting the worst evil onto their former idol and teacher.”

The language of Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democratic candidate, goes in that direction: “The government is bowing down before the Americans one more time.” And: “Enormous damage to the German people has occurred. That’s monstrous.”

In addition, Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic Party chairman, accused the Americans and British of “massive economic espionage” and said they and their “helpers” should be investigated by the German authorities.

Merkel’s line of defense is not (à la Schäuble or Schily) to scold those who are casting the country as victimized. Strikingly, she has leaned in the direction of alarm, twice paraphrasing Schröder to needle the Americans with the refrain that Germany did not believe in the law of the strongest but in the strength of the law.

It was as if the United States had intruded on Merkel’s version of Germany’s perfect world, described by a columnist in the newspaper Bild as selling cars everywhere while the Americans do the dirty work. In reality, close contact between American and German intelligence services, involving shared surveillance programs and equipment, has deepened since the start of the Schröder chancellery in 1998.

John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, offered this frame of reference: “Factual and unemotional are rarely used words used the characterize discussions within Germany society. Germany has yet to rebuild a foundation of self-confidence which makes it possible to view challenges as tasks rather than emotional crises.”

“The next emotional outburst against America is probably just around the corner,” he said.

Latest Lefty Rewriting of History: During World War II, "Sex become a way to assert American domination" over France

Just when you thought that World War II was fought by the greatest generation comes a book accusing the American army of racism, of harboring innumerable rapists, of bombing French cities with no just cause, and of being "guests [in France] who have overstayed their welcome", thus meaning the US presence "was not just an experience of liberation." (Oh, and while we're at it, Times Square's VJ-Day Kissing Sailor Turns Out to Be a "Sexual Predator".)

Nothing about the fact that these young men are going into combat, that soldiers everywhere are hungry for the company of women (whether in their own country or on a foreign base), the unfortunate but necessary options that must considered be to wage and to win battles, and what kind of country France would be in had the status quo (continued occupation by a different kind of army, the Nazi one) continued.

No matter.  Of course, What Soldiers Do (Sex and the American GI in World War II France)  is a World War II book that Le Monde must review, by all means, indeed that it must devote a full-page article to, and so it sends Washington correspondent Corine Lesnes to interview the author.

It turns out that Mary Louise Roberts started the book right after the beginning of the Gulf War and, thus, the slightly skeptical citizen (American or foreign) is forced to wonder whether it isn't really but the latet full-blown attack on America and on American history.

"Sex become a a manner of assuring American domination over a secondary power", says the University of Wisconsin professor. "I wish the United States would be less arrogant vis-à-vis France." And the French are correct not to be grateful to Uncle Sam.

Vous avez commencé ce livre juste après les tensions entre la France et les Etats-Unis sur l'intervention en Irak, en 2003. Pourquoi ?

Je voulais voir comment une telle friction avait pu se produire entre ces deux alliés. Du coup, je me suis intéressée à ce qui s'était passé à la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale, notamment après le débarquement. Et là, en consultant les archives, je me suis aperçue que tous les rapports de police montrent la même chose. Il y a eu des viols et des crimes partout où les GI étaient stationnés, à Reims, Cherbourg, Brest, Le Havre, Caen...

Vous montrez d'abord le contexte chargé dans lequel les soldats américains sont envoyés en Normandie.

Il suffit de consulter Stars and Stripes, le quotidien de l'armée. On y trouve tous les vieux stéréotypes. La France est présentée comme une sorte de bordel. Elle est complètement érotisée. Cette image date en fait de la première guerre mondiale. Quand les soldats sont revenus, ils ont raconté des histoires affriolantes. Après, l'armée américaine a "vendu" la guerre comme une occasion de se faire embrasser par des Françaises, et peut-être plus. Ce n'est pas propre à la France, bien sûr. Tous les théâtres de guerre étaient érotisés. C'était l'époque des photos de pin-up accrochées dans les dortoirs, de Rita Hayworth... Mais une image revient avec constance dans le journal de l'armée : les GI entourés par des Françaises. Embrassés par des Françaises. Sur l'une, on voit un groupe de femmes, visiblement réjouies. Et la légende dit : "Voilà ce pour quoi nous nous battons." 

Dans le vocabulaire, Paris est une femme, elle est "belle", elle est "seule depuis quatre ans", nous allons lui "tenir compagnie"... Quand ils débarquent en France, les GI ont l'impression d'être des chevaliers qui viennent à la rescousse de la damoiselle en péril. Ils ont été préparés à l'idée qu'ils seraient gratifiés de certaines récompenses, que les Français avaient une dette à leur égard et que les Françaises s'en acquitteraient.

Il s'en est suivi un tsunami de libido masculine, qui va se traduire par des phénomènes de prostitution à grande échelle. Et il y aura une vague de viols en Normandie, en août et septembre 1944.

Quelle est l'ampleur de la prostitution ?

A la Libération, beaucoup de femmes étaient pauvres, particulièrement à Paris. Leurs maris étaient dans les camps allemands, elles avaient besoin d'argent. De plus, il y avait un sentiment de reconnaissance vis-à-vis des Américains. Mais ce sentiment a disparu après quelques mois, et, à l'été 1945, les GI ressemblaient davantage à des invités qui s'attardent trop longtemps. A ce moment-là, le système français des maisons closes a été complètement débordé. …

Vous y voyez une leçon politique ?

Je me suis intéressée au sexe comme une forme de pouvoir. L'armée américaine a envisagé la question de la prostitution et des viols comme une façon d'établir une forme de suprématie. Souvenez-vous, nous sommes en 1945, les Etats-Unis commencent à s'affirmer comme une puissance mondiale. C'est aussi un moment où la France, humiliée, s'aperçoit qu'elle a perdu son statut de superpuissance. Le sexe devient une manière d'assurer la domination américaine sur une puissance secondaire. L'image romantique du Débarquement permet de neutraliser les tensions sur la souveraineté nationale française et le refus, pendant des mois, de reconnaître le général de Gaulle comme le chef du gouvernement provisoire.

Rewriting History: Times Square's VJ-Day Kissing Sailor Turns Out to Be a "Sexual Predator"

So that's what it has come to: as Claire Guillot explains in Le Monde's Ce que l'on croit voir series, the kissing sailor in the Alfred Eisenstaedt photo at Times Square on VJ Day is attacked for "sexual aggression". "Greta Zimmer Friedman [a dental assistant and not a nurse] … wasn't in the street to celebrate and she did not want to be kissed, certainly not by a hunky sailor who was drunk." So let's get this straight: a man, a fighter, does not have the right to be inebriated, even when learning of the end of the most deadly war in history. As for Zimmer, the "Austrian refuge in the United States [who] lost her father and mother in the Nazi death camps" had no intention of celebrating the end of the most deadly war in history.

Related: Latest Rewriting of History — During World War II, "Sex become a a manner of assuring American domination" over France

On l'a longtemps prise pour l'image la plus romantique du monde, mais la photo d'Alfred Eisenstaedt n'a rien d'une scène d'amour. Dans cette image, tout semble parfait : un marin et une infirmière s'embrassent avec passion à Times Square pour célébrer la capitulation du Japon le 14 août 1945. Lui en uniforme sombre, elle tout en blanc, abandonnés dans une embrassade théâtrale, aveugles à la foule riante, sur la place la plus célèbre du monde. Publiée par le magazine Life, elle est devenue une icône, image symbole du "V-J Day" (Victory over Japan Day) et de l'euphorie qui l'a accompagné.

L'image est si parfaite qu'elle a longtemps été accusée d'être une mise en scène. D'autant que le photographe n'avait pas identifié les protagonistes. Au fil du temps, plusieurs marins et infirmières se sont reconnus. En 2012, The Kissing Sailor, de Lawrence Verria et George Galdorisi (éd. Naval Institute, en anglais), confirme que la scène était spontanée – contrairement au Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville, de Robert Doisneau. L'ouvrage conclut que les héros en sont Greta Zimmer Friedman et George Mendonsa, tous deux encore vivants. Mais la sortie du livre déclenche une polémique : l'image cacherait... une agression sexuelle.

 … Le marin George Mendonsa, lui, est au cinéma avec sa petite amie (et future femme) Rita, quand une foule en liesse interrompt la séance. Ravi de ne pas avoir à retourner dans le Pacifique, le marin écume les bars, Rita sur ses talons. A Times Square, bien aviné, il aperçoit Greta Zimmer qui retourne au travail. Dans le livre The Eye of Eisenstaedt, le photographe écrit : "J'ai remarqué un marin venant dans ma direction. Il attrapait toutes les femmes à sa portée et les embrassait, jeunes comme vieilles. Puis j'ai remarqué l'infirmière, debout dans cette immense foule. J'ai fait le point sur elle, et, comme je l'espérais, le marin est arrivé, a attrapé l'infirmière, et s'est penché pour l'embrasser."

Greta Zimmer ne connaît donc pas le marin. Son abandon n'est pas une pose consentie mais contrainte. Sur une des quatre images d'Eisenstaedt, on la voit serrer le poing. En 2005, quand on lui demande ce qu'elle a ressenti, Greta Zimmer déclare : "Je sentais qu'il était très fort. Il me tenait très serré. Je ne sais pas quoi penser du baiser... c'était juste quelqu'un qui fêtait une occasion. Ce n'était pas romantique." Les célébrations de la victoire n'ont pas toujours été bon enfant, rappellent Robert Hariman et John Louis Lucaites dans le livre No Caption Needed (éd. University of Chicago, en anglais, 2011). L'article de Life consacré à l'événement en 1945 évoque des scènes de liesse, mais aussi des débordements, des violences. Six images de baisers accompagnent l'article. Mais "à l'exception de la photo du "Baiser de Times Square" d'Eisenstaedt, toutes les autres photos de baisers décrivent des actes plus lascifs ou transgressifs". C'est la plus consensuelle qui deviendra une icône, réduisant l'événement à ses aspects positifs.

 … Quand le livre The Kissing Sailor est publié, plusieurs auteurs, dont le blog féministe "Crates and Ribbons", soulignent "l'agression sexuelle" : Greta n'était pas là pour faire la fête, elle ne voulait pas être embrassée, encore moins par un marin costaud et saoul. Les réactions des internautes sont violentes. Beaucoup jugent cette lecture de l'image anachronique. Il est vrai que Greta Zimmer, la "victime", ne semble pas traumatisée.

How Presidential Can You Look in a Photo Like This?

Many think that the photo of François Hollande in the Thomas Wieder article of his visit to Clichy-sous-Bois makes the president of France look rather ridiculous