I think there is a link error to the article in OJ's post. On the rare chance anyone else actually wants to go read the reuters article, try here.

More stories in Arabic would probably help the circulation woes. Target your growing market...

This is hilarious. Le Monde, the NYT of France, which proudly points to the fact that it is 100% employee-owned is going to have to seek out capitalists to buy its stock. They must be slashing their wrists. Liberation, a tedious left-wing middlebrow rag which comdemns Israel on a daily basis, is chasing after Rothschild money. How great is that!

John, the Arabs can't read either French or Arabic.

Well, how about just printing big pictures of slavering hook-nosed Jews? That would satisfy both the French and the Arabs.

Why should a nation's newspapers do better than the nation?

Translate the captions, draw a beret and moustache on him, then get the word out that 'Ziggy est dans la maison!', and voila! They'll be selling newspapers like hotcakes. Or I guess crepes.

Be careful what you say about the French. Given the power of the euro right now, they are likely to come here and buy our asses out.

That is, if the Chineese and the Japanese banks don't foreclose on us first.

George Bush - Ensuring economic security since 2001.

Yea, the Japanese buying Rockefeller Center in 1989 really was the end of American civilzation, wasn't it?

What France is that Mr. mkultra, the one with the double digit unemployment, the emigration of its techie class and the negative real economic growth? Or is it the fantasy one in your mind?

WWI was quite significant, although it was not entirely all conducted in France.

jim:

But France was insignificant to it.

oj,

Pay a visit to the Marne, Verdun, the Somme and Ypres before you say that. France lost 1.4 million men and due to their already aged population at that time have probably never recovered.

Bart:

It was a battle ground between the Anglosphere and the Krauts with some frenchmen caught in the middle. France was incidental to the questions of the war.

Marginal? Alsace-Lorraine? Belgium? African Colonies?

As the grandson of a German Army veteran of WWI, I can tell you that the German High Command did not let Alsatians fight on the Western front, but instead shipped them to the East to fight Russia. They believed the Elsasser would all desert to join the French, Saverne had an impact.

The Elsasser would not have had one.

Obviously, the Kaiser's High Command thought we mattered. The same was true in WWII, except for SS units. The mother of one of my best friends there used to go to the train station every day waiting for her brother to come home from the Soviet Union.

Just so you know, it was Alsatians who wrote the 'Marseillaise.' The Marseille detachments thought it was a great song and adopted it. And it is the single best national anthem anywhere.

Every time I hear it I want to pimp out my sister to some Kraut for a bar of chocolate.

Bart:

"As the grandson of a German Army veteran of WWI,"..

My goodness, great-nephew of turn-of-the-century Wisconsin rural schoolteachers, descended from Alsatian politicians, personal victim of Canadian anti-Jewish policies in WW 11, flagbearer for the Kaiser... Bart, you beat Harry or even Forrest Gump for having a family in the center of history--or at least in the center of our posts about history.

Here's a great example of the power of words. Call a relatively high exchange rate "strong" and a relatively low exchange rate "weak" and people who otherwise know nothing about economics start to go on and on about how the former is good and the latter is the end of civilization.

By themselves, exchange rates are meaningless and any time spend thinking about them is time wasted.

David:

You oftentimes pack a great deal of meaning into a few words. By themselves, exchange rates are meaningless and any time spend thinking about them is time wasted. exceeds your already high standards.

Peter,

It's easy. My mother's family came here from what is now Belarus, and settled eventually in rural Wisconsin, where my grandfather was able to send over to Russia for his younger sisters to come to America, and get an education. This was after 1905 but before WWI and was not unusual. Women at the time became schoolteachers so as to be able to earn a living prior to getting married. Door-Kewaunee Normal in the county seat where they lived.

Some other relatives went to Latin America in the 20s, giving me family in Uruguay, Chile and Argentina. At the time the US and Canada closed their doors to Eastern European Jewish immigration, so the only options left were France or Argentina. They chose Buenos Aires, and subsequently moved to neighboring states in the Peronist period. Anyone familiar with early 20th century Jewish history would not see this as unusual.

As for my father's family, my paternal grandparents were born in Alsace, in one of the small towns near Strasbourg, Barr to be exact(hence 'Bart'). My grandfather was a baker, as his ancestors had been since forever. During WWI, like most Alsatian males, he got drafted into the Kaiser's army. Alsace was part of Germany prior to WWI and he served on the Russian front where he got wounded and decorated and ended up a brevet corporal. His photograph in his WWI dress uniform hangs over my bed.

After WWI, he and my grandmother moved to the US with their son, Sholom, and had another son, Herschel, my father. Most of my grandparents family were killed in the Holocaust and their names can be seen at the Natzwiller-Struthof camp about 10km from Barr, about 40km SW of Strasbourg. After WWI, Alsace became French. My grandmother's kid brother, Avram, took advantage of this to go to university, rather than into the family baking business, and became a physician, choosing to do his mandatory military service in the French Foreign Legion, which sent him to Syria and Madagascar, giving him a lifelong interest in archaeology and anthropology. After WWII, where he had been forced to flee with his family to the town of Brive in the SW Unoccupied Zone, where a fellow Legionaire physician hired him as a physician assistant(it was illegal for Jews to be physicians under Vichy even if they had served in the French military), he returned to Barr, setting up his medical practice. He was reasonably skilled and became quite wealthy, and was elected mayor of the town. He served in that post for 40 years. One of his grandsons, my cousin Nicolas, is now a member of the Conseil Regional, the equivalent of the State Assembly for the Department of Bas-Rhin.

If you have a lot of people in your family with high-powered educations and decent-sized bankrolls it's not hard, especially when you have to flee from places.

I have never claimed 'personal victimization' at the hands of Jew-haters from Canada. However, I have claimed victimization for being American, Francophone or for being around people who smoke in hotel lobbies there.

Francophone? You've been victimized in Canada for being Francophone? Bart, that takes talent.

Once you get West of Quebec it's very easy. Just one 'oui' ought to do it. Of course, speaking English in the Gaspe' gets you pretty much the same shabby treatment.

But then, the Canadien jersey I wore to the playoff game at Maple Leaf Gardens had something to do with it perhaps. :)

Right, so you spoke English in the Gaspe and French in Toronto and came away from both feeling victimized. Bart, does the word "co-dependency" mean anything to you?

I would never speak English in the Gaspe'. It was a favorite vacation spot for my paternal grandparents as they could speak French and get anythong they needed. I love the Gaspe' but the ocean is just too G-damn cold. The food is fabulous however.

My Toronto experience came about because I met a bunch of Francophones and proceeded to get seriously polluted(Canadian beer is much better than American).

Canada purports to be bilingual. However, if you speak the minority language whether it is French in Toronto or English in Montreal you find out the essential falsehood of that notion.

In all honesty, when I get married, I'm going to Lake Louise for my honeymoon.

"My Toronto experience came about because I met a bunch of Francophones and proceeded to get seriously polluted"

It's called biculturalism--the glue that holds us together.