Boycots

[1 Bravo 6]

:devious: :devious: :devious:

Received a very interesting email from an ex service organisation listing a heap of companies owned or majority owned by French companies.

The email gives reasons why those companies should be boycotted by Americans.

I will NOT post it on this site.

If anyone wants a copy, email me and I'll send it to you.

One very noticeable company is NISSAN, which apparently is majority owned by Renault.

Rick.

[Z Kid]

Nissan hey, well you better stop buying parts for the Z, and give it to me to remove the temptation.

[Giedrius]

Oh, I've seen that email. It's one of the dumbest things I have ever seen! :sick:

[ZwolleY]

Are you asking the preident of NASCAR to change his name from French to Freedom? Will you boycott all NASCAR races if he doen't? Send the Statue of Liberty back? Change the name of LaFayette Square to Liberty Square (it was named LaFayette for a reason you know)?. Changing the name of French fries to Liberty fries in the Congressional dining room was laughable. Reafirms my cynicism of our politicians! I would wager that Halliburton has some French ownership. By the way Haliburton, or a subsidiary, was awarded the first contract to rebuild the Iraq oil fields, no bidding, national security you know. $800,000,000. Smash up Peugeus? Read some history, see how much the French had to do with the founding of our country. Oh yes, our country was founded by protestors. They were called patriots, if you remember.

[EScanlon]

Or better yet, let's all get REAL stupid and do some idiotic "boycott" which will not hurt anyone but ourselves.

This boycott which purports to "penalize" the French for not having backed the U.S. move in the U.N. is so absolutely UN-AMERICAN as to be, literally, what Saddam Hussein would advocate.

Why? Simply this, the French President and their people expressed THEIR opinion, and they stuck by it.

THAT IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING THAT SADDAM HUSSEIN DOES NOT ALLOW!!!

Heck, in the United States we advocate Freedom of Speech. Then some idiot decides to boycott the French for having a different opinion than theirs.

When 9-11 happened, at first there was a massive back-lash against Arabic people, both immigrants and U.S. BORN Arabic Descent people, until someone spoke out that THOSE PEOPLE WERE NOT THE ONES TO BLAME. And rightly so.

But we're going to void some of the basic precepts in our Constitution, by supporting this boycott.

Well, to anyone who feels that this boycott is justified and should be enforced:

GET THE HELL OUT OF MY UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!!

And if you live outside the U.S. of A.;

REMEMBER YOU SUPPORT COMMUNISM AND DICTATORSHIPS!

DON'T COME CRYING TO THE U.S.A. TO RESCUE YOU WHEN YOU SUDDENLY FIND YOURSELF IN THE SAME SITUATION!!!

I served in the U.S. Air Force, and one of our basic credos was:

I will support, to the death, your right to an opinion and the right to voice it, EVEN if it differs from mine.

So now we have some idiots who would select those products that would HURT the French. Have they stopped to consider that many of those companies have holdings in many parts of the U.S. as well as the rest of the world? So are we really going to hurt the French? Probably not. In fact, we'll probably do some more harm to our OWN people than French people.

So let's address some other items of French provenance that you may want to consider boycotting:

CHEMOTHERAPY.

After all wasn't it Madam Curie that pioneered RadioActive Isotope research. So if you have a loved one who is dying of Cancer and undergoing Chemotherapy........STOP!!! You're going to make a political statement with their life. You're going to point out to the French just how serious you are about their voicing their opinion. You are so adamant, that you will let your significant other, son, daughter, mother, or father DIE for a political belief.

Next, let's consider how many Americans, Australians, Europeans, Oriental and Latin American's we can hurt WORLDWIDE by having French companies boycotted. Now isn't that interesting, we're supporting the lay-offs of thousands of individuals because the French expressed their opinion.

Sorry, but this has to be one of the STUPIDEST ideas proposed yet.

2¢

[Chris Russell]

Madam Curie was born Maria Sklodowska, in Poland, November 7, 1867. She moved to Paris in November 1891, at the age of 24.

[24OZ]

Really I never new that and thanks for the clarification.

Besides this geogrpahical error, Enrique's message should have come across by now.

[SHOTIME]

Not buying a 100% French product is one thing, buying a partly owned product is another. Yes, Nissan is owned partly by the French, yet it is still owned partly by the Japanese and both Japanese and Americans are employees. You aren't so much hurting the French as you're more hurting the workers of the companies, in Japan and right here. Now a bottle of wine that is produced by France by the French and shipped to a liquor store here that also sells other wines is different. I stopped buying French wine but also buy US wine at the same store. They aren't loseing business because of me doing that. I don't mind a boycott, just one that makes sense. With that said, if you give someone enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves. The French will eventually get what's coming in the end.

As for the protesters, most of their demonstrations are organized by socialist groups, a pretty name for communists. So take that for what it's worth. They have a right to express thier opinion, yet at the same time that also opens them up to critisism. Free speach works both ways. Nobody WANTS war. After seeing the celebrations today, I think war was more than justified.

[EScanlon]

Chris Russell wrote:

Madam Curie was born Maria Sklodowska, in Poland, November 7, 1867. She moved to Paris in November 1891, at the age of 24.

Now in the NEXT paragraph:

'codiscoverer of radium 1898 with her husband Pierre a French physicist, with whom she shared the Nobel prize for physics 1903, and alone for chemistry 1911.

So her laboratory and where she worked was in France. That work is how the radio-isotopes were discovered. Sadly due to her work in a very close environment with radioactive isotopes, Marie Curie eventually died from exposure to them. Interestingly enough the Curie, which is a measure of radioactivity is named in honor of her husband.

Werner Von Braun was born in Germany 1912, and although he had involvement with the V-1 project, his claim to fame is more for his involvement with the NSA later known as NASA....an American project. Would you claim that the landing on the moon was due to GERMAN technology?

So Chris, thank you for the minor biography lesson. Would you do us a favor? Read the COMPLETE article and not just the one fact that you think debunks another's argument.

[MDyer]

however, is it 2 out of 3 French wanted Iraq to win? At the risk of sounding prejudice and making a blanket statement, I'm going to anyway. 2 out of 3 French are f**king idiots (or whatever the percentage that support Iraq).

The French people generally dislike Americans for no good reason. I'm not going to rant about it, but screw 'em.

I DO think the French gov't, as well as the Germans, have some real dirt on there hands that we don't know about yet.

Missiles/defense technology for sweetheart contracts and sweetheart oil deals.

[EScanlon]

No argument here Mike.

Heck, we're (the U.S.) not innocent either. When Iraq was warring with Iran, guess who we backed up?

And if you'll recall the political nonsense leading up to Gulf War I, didn't we kind of tacitly agree to ignore Hussein's invasion of Kuwait? Only to then turn around and condemn him for it. The details behind all this are sketchy and I've not been able to find a credible descriptive timeline of it.

Then AFTER the first Gulf War, when the Kurds were actively revolting against Saddam, something we encouraged, we turned our backs on them and let them suffer the consequences, which Saddam readily applied.

But all this discussion does is change the original discussion to whether or not you support the war.

Whether you are for it or against it, is not what I am angry about. My "rant" is against those people who would take action against others because they exercised their rights. Rights as defined in the American Constitution. Rights that we Americans feel everyone, not just Americans are entitled to.

That we're speaking of other countries is not a valid counter point either. The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...." When it has become apparent to the U.S. that someone is trampling upon someone's "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness..." we step in and take them to task.

This is what's going on in Iraq today.

2¢

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by EScanlon

That we're speaking of other countries is not a valid counter point either. The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...." When it has become apparent to the U.S. that someone is trampling upon someone's "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness..." we step in and take them to task.

This is what's going on in Iraq today.

2¢

Where was the USA when the Tutsi's and the Hutu's where slaughtering each other in Rwanda? Our government picks and chooses who and when and if they will step in to free people from brutal governments ( usually based on what they can gain from the action), not simply because "someone is trampling upon someone's "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness..."

We haven't done squat about North Korea in decades. And they have the technology to deliver a Nuke to the West Coast of the US. Of course, there isn't any oil in Korea, either

PS I think the Boycot idea is pointless.