The French Army...

March 13, 2009

As France rejoins NATO, a humorous reminder of why we never missed
them

By Marcus Dunk

With typical flamboyance and fanfare, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy this week announced that France is to rejoin Nato's military
command after 40 years of self-imposed exile.

It was in 1966 that President Charles de Gaulle pulled out of the
heart of the Nato alliance, claiming that belonging to the Nato
military command undermined French independence and sovereignty.

Yet while its allies in the alliance have publicly welcomed this
return to the fold, a fundamental question seems to have been
ignored: do we actually want the French back?

Since World War II, the French and its army have been seen by many
as standard-bearers for surrender, cowardice and military
ineptitude.

But at least they've made us laugh. Here's a selection of
morale-boosting jokes and quips about the people so memorably
described in The Simpsons TV series as the cheese-eating surrender
monkeys...

What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up?
The army.

How can you recognise a French veteran?
Sunburned armpits.

Why are there so many tree-lined boulevards in France?
Germans like to march in the shade.

Why did it take Germany three days to conquer France in World War
II?
Because it was raining.

Why did the French give America the Statue of Liberty?
Because she has only one arm raised.

Why do the French get more votes in the U.N.?
They vote with both hands.

Why is the French fighter plane called the Mirage?
It doesn't exist..

Why don't they have fireworks at Euro Disney?
Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender.

What does 'Maginot' mean in German?
Welcome!

Why is the French Foreign Legion the only decent fighting force in
the whole French Army?
Because it's made up of foreigners.

What is the most useful thing in the French Army?
A rear-view mirror, so they can see the war.

Why does Nike like the French Army?
Because in wartime they are the biggest buyers of running shoes.

Why did the French celebrate their World Cup in 1998 so wildly?
It was their first time they won anything without outside help.

Why do the French have glass bottom boats in their Navy?
To see all their other ships.

What did the mayor of Paris say to the German army as they entered
the city in World War II?
'Table for 100,000, monsieur?'

Why are the French afraid of war?
You would be, too, if you had never won one.

How do you stop a French army on horseback?
Turn off the carousel.

What's the best thing about being French?
You can surrender at the beginning of the war and somebody else will
win it for you.

'I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French
one behind me.'
General George S. Patton.

And the best one...

A long time ago, the British and French were at war. During one
battle, the French captured an English major. They took the major to
their headquarters and a French general began to question him.
The French general asked: 'Why do you English officers all wear red
coats? Don't you know the red material makes you easy targets for us
to shoot?'
In his debonair English way, the major informed the general that the
reason English officers wear red coats is so that if they are shot,
the blood won't show, and the men they are leading won't panic.
And that is why from that day to now, all French army officers wear
brown pants.

Work...

Organization Structure:

Obama...

And thats when the fight started...

My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed.I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?" "No," she answered.I then said, "Is that your final answer?" She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend." And that's when the fight started....

I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?"It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said.So I suggested, "How about the kitchen?" And that's when the fight started....

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage.I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour.The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed.I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, 'The weather out there is terrible.'My loving wife of 10 years replied, 'Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?'And then the fight started ...

A man and a woman were asleep like two innocent babies.Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a loud noise came from outside.The woman, bewildered, jumped up from the bed and yelled at the man 'Holy Shit'. That must be my husband!'So the man jumped out of the bed; scared and naked jumped out the window.He smashed himself on the
ground, ran through a thorn bush and to his car as fast as he could go. A few minutes later he returned and went up to the bedroom and screamed at the woman, 'I AM your husband! ' The woman yelled back, 'Yeah, then why were you running?'And then the fight started.....

I tried to talk my wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95.Instead, she bought a jar of cold cream for $7.95.I told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold cream.And then the fight started....

My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels.She asked, 'What's on TV?'I said, 'Dust.' And then the fight started...

Free Speech and Religion

The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism – giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds – are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we "respect" religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten – to put him on the side of the religious censors.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". It was a Magna Carta for mankind – and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it "Western", Robert Mugabe calls it "colonialist", and Dick Cheney calls it "outdated". The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it – but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".

In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.

Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN's Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech – including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets". The council agreed – so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.

Anything which can be deemed "religious" is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah "will not happen" and "Islam will not be crucified in this council" – and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.

Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.

To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's – or their oppressors'?

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: "The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom."

Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.

Underpinning these "reforms" is a notion seeping even into democratic societies – that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of "prejudice" – and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.

I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.

But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.

But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has "faith" that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It's easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.

But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs – but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.

Yet this idea – at the heart of the Universal Declaration – is being lost. To the right, it thwacks into apologists for religious censorship; to the left, it dissolves in multiculturalism. The hijacking of the UN Special Rapporteur by religious fanatics should jolt us into rescuing the simple, battered idea disintegrating in the middle: the equal, indivisible human right to speak freely.

Amazing Anagrams

The Incredibles

Tony Blair	=	Only a Brit
Hansie Cronje	=	A sincere John
A Telephone Girl	=	Repeating "Hello"
Debit card	=	Bad credit
Dame Agatha Christie	=	I am a death case, right?
Conversation	=	Voices rant on
Heavy rain	=	Hire a Navy
Statue of Liberty	=	Built to stay free
Stone Age	=	Stage One

Anagram Synonyms?

Animosity	=	Is No Amity
Dormitory	=	Dirty Room
Desperation	=	A Rope Ends It
Evangelist	=	Evil's Agent
The Morse Code	=	Here Come Dots
Slot Machines	=	Cash Lost in 'em
Mother-in-law	=	Woman Hitler
Punishment	=	Nine thumps
A Shoplifter	=	Has to pilfer
Snooze Alarms	=	Alas! No More Z's
Alec Guinness	=	Genuine Class
Semolina	=	Is No Meal
The Public Art Galleries	=	Large Picture Halls, I Bet
A Decimal Point	=	I'm a Dot in Place
The Earthquakes	=	That Queer Shake
Eleven plus two	=	Twelve plus one
Contradiction	=	Accord not in it
Astronomer	=	Moon Starer
Year Two Thousand	=	A Year To Shut Down

The Amazing

[From Hamlet by Shakespeare] To be or not to be; that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
=
In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

Politician Anagrams

George Bush	=	He bugs Gore
George Herbert Walker Bush	=	Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog
Leroy Newton Gingrich	=	Yon Right-winger Clone
Margaret Thatcher	=	That great charmer
Princess Diana	=	End Is A Car Spin
Ronald Wilson Reagan	=	A long-insane Warlord (or Insane Anglo warlord)
Ronald Reagan	=	A darn long era
The Conservative Party	=	Teacher in vast poverty

The Grand Finale

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil A. Armstrong
=
A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

V

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Two reasons...

There are only 2 reasons when i'm lazy: When I have no incentive, and when I pretend to be pensive!

There are only 2 reasons when I lie: When i'm not contractually bound, and when i'm not morally sound!

There are only 2 reasons when i'm unreasonable: When people just be stupid, and when i'm struck by that fool cupid!

There are only 2 reasons when i'm angry: when I don't get my way, and when my mum-in-law comes to stay!

There are only two reasons when i'm rash: When i'm out to make some cash, and when I want to kick your ass!

There are only 2 reasons when I dont listen: When i'm thinking from my dick, and when you bore me bloody sick!

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in Title	22700
in URL	1320

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Observations about the urban indian

The urban Indian's behaviour unfolds from his cultural values. The first value of the Indian is his belief that the world is zero-sum, where there is no gain without loss.

Each man looks out for his best interest, and there is no understanding of a collective good. This makes the Indian an opportunist.

On the road his opportunism is seen in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine as long as you have an advantage over people in front of or next to you.

The Indian's instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police, his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee. Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran over people and drove away.

This instinct of me-versus-the- world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. They form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced will scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered.

Because they do not understand collective good, Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. The un-policed Indian neighbourhood in the west will slowly unravel and come to resemble the Indian bazaar.

Religion has a high content of magic and miracles, and gods and saints must be appeased all the time to watch out for you. The Indian notices the disability of the other and points it out through his name: Langda, Kaana, Goonga, Takloo, and Motu. He is neutral in this and will also recognise those more fortunate than him: Gora, Maaldaar and so on.

The Indian is prejudiced against dark skin, and the westerner is held in awe because of his fairness. The African is despised and feared. The ability of West Indian cricketers is recognised, but even revered figures like Richards and Lloyd will face racial slurs of 'Kaalia' and 'Kallu' on the field.

This prejudice does not come to the Indian from his Hindu faith, but his culture.

Two Hindu Gods, Krishna and Shiv, are dark and the names Shyam and Shyamala, which mean dark, are associated with sensual beauty.

The second value of the Indian is his tolerance. Few other nations in the world have been as accepting of the foreigner and his religion as India.

The Parsis, who were persecuted by Arabs who defeated Persia under Caliph Abu Bakr (RA) in AD 627, found prosperity in India.

His tolerance comes from a belief in relativism: that there is no one truth, which he believes, is an essential part of the Hindu religion.

The tolerance is value-neutral and shows up in his attitude to corruption, which also he does not view in absolute terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians, who are demonstrably corrupt, caught on camera taking a bribe or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a comeback -- unthinkable in the west.

Mob violence is contextual and may be explained away as being caused by provocation, such as by Muslims in Gujarat or by North Indians in Bombay.

While he tolerates the other culture, the Indian does not see it as equal. The north Indian finds south Indian accents funny. This will be endlessly caricatured in cinema. His entertainment is slapstick and he is moved only by unsubtle emotion.

The third is his value of his culture. This is seen in received terms. He does not engage with it or try to understand its nuance. Someone, somewhere has done or is doing something wise, which is to be followed.

Indians earnestly recite a classic prayer -- say the Gayatri Mantra -- but will not know what it means. Many Indians can sing the national anthem while understanding only those words in it that are geographic terms: Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Bengal, Vindhya, Himachal, Yamuna, Ganga.

Indians revere Gandhi and Nehru but do not read their works and cannot really say what they stood for or against. Honouring something and holding it to respect is good enough.

Learning is prized but the nature of study is recitation and repetition. Though children rarely understand what they are taught, Indians are first rate at committing things to memory. In America, the Indian has no equal in the annual Spelling Bee contest.

This formula skewers his creativity. Bollywood's instinct is towards plagiarism, and it lifts scripts and screenplays and melodies. Children have no control over what they want to study and are prepared from a very young age along their parents' expectation to become doctors and engineers. Because the family is a unit, Indian children feel guilty about not meeting their parents' ambitions. India is the only nation in the world where children in school kill themselves after failing an exam.

Many urban children are taught dance -- Kathak and Bharat Natyam -- and Hindustani music, which the Indian sees as his inheritance. Here the Indian is deeply secular and the Muslim ustad is as revered as the Hindu guru. While the urban Indian understands the world increasingly through English, his entertainment is entirely local. The discos of Bombay light up only when Bollywood's Hindi songs play.

The fourth value is his inclination towards the communitarian or the collective. The correct word is actually communal, but in India it is understood negatively to mean religious bigotry. Indians operate by consensus. The smallest unit of consensus is the family. Families agree through living together. Parents and grandparents are cared for better than in most cultures and kept within the family.

Dissent is unacceptable. The political party, a larger unit of consensus, is undemocratic in India and its leaders not elected internally. The Congress is run by what is called a coterie. Many leaders -- Bal Thackeray is one -- are elected 'for life'. Because he inclines towards the collective, the Indian's individualism is low. Individualism cannot exist without respect for the individualism of the other. Harmony is two disparate views engaging without friction.

In Hindustani music, the Indian shows his view of harmony as inessential. Hindustani music has melody and rhythm, two out of the three components of music, but does not harmonise two separate melodies. In Hindustani rhythm, the beat keeps returning to the Sam, where all listeners 'agree'. The definition of Sam given to tabla students is that it is that moment of the taal, "Jahan 'Haan!' kehney ko man karey".

Melody comes from the singer or the solo instrument. Where there is an accompanying instrument -- and Indians are clear about hierarchy -- it must repeat the melody line. The harmonium or the sarangi only imitates the trailing voice of the singer.

The dark side to collectivism is the mob, in which the Indian shows his valour. Indian mobs build quickly because the consensus is already present and only needs to be operationalised. The massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 or Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded by the build-up of a known rhythm. The two or three days of actual violence are only the Sam. The current violence in Mumbai by Raj Thackeray's party against North Indians has a Marathi consensus behind it.

Going against the consensus can be dangerous in India and the right to free speech is conditional. The quality of debate is poor and it will rapidly accommodate emotion, and then abuse. The origin of the argument is traced immediately to the person's community, and who says something is more important than what he says.

An example of this is the readers' comments that accompany reports on India's largest portal, www.rediff.com <http://www.rediff.com/ .

Because individualism is not recognised, seniority is the currency of competence and it prevails in government and even private sector jobs.

There is no recognition of the space of the other. When Indians use the terminology of our universal civilisation, they do so without understanding it.

Indians say 'Please excuse me' as they brush past someone. We do not say it and wait for the other to move.

Californication

"It's a big, bad world full of twists and turns, and people have a way of blinking
and missing the moment... the moment that could've changed everything"


"I met someone.
It was an accident. I wasn't looking for it.
It was a perfect storm. She said one thing. I said another.
Next thing I knew, I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation"

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