thedrifter
07-03-03, 07:25 AM
PEEVE LA FRANCE!
Angry American e-mails
invade Normandy
Web photos suggest D-Day museum removed flags to snub U.S.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 2, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
By Art Moore
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A small town in Normandy has been flooded with more than 200 e-mails from angry Americans provoked by photographs suggesting U.S. flags and emblems were removed from a D-Day museum amid testy relations with France.
The most provocative image, posted on a weblog called "The Dissident Frogman," shows an empty flagpole flanked by a British flag and a French flag. The photo is accompanied by the caption: "Guess what's missing on an empty pole, around a monument to the liberators in the Museum's park up front?"
The author said he had just returned from Normandy and suggested to readers that anyone who planned to visit the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux might want to cancel.
In a typical response among the many posted below the article, a reader called the purported omission by the French "one of the most childish, absurdly self-indulgent and hateful things I have ever seen."
But there is a simple explanation, insisted Magalie Bignon, spokeswoman for the mayor of Bayeux.
Bignon told WorldNetDaily the empty pole is reserved for the flag of the Sherwood Rangers, the British regiment that liberated the town from the Nazis on June 7, 1944.
"We are very disappointed that people would think we have forgotten what you have done for us," she said in a telephone interview this morning. "We have a great, great sympathy for all the allied people, Americans, English. Everything is done here for homage to our liberators."
Two other photographs on the "Frogman" site suggested American items were conspicuously missing from displays at the souvenir shop.
Bignon said the shop sold its entire supply, because so many American tourists come in June during the anniversary commemorations, "even this year" amid anger over France's refusal to cooperate with the U.S. in the war in Iraq.
She noted each of the town's five major crossroads has an American flag and the red, white and blue appears at the many memorials across Normandy.
France's split with the U.S. over Iraq is regarded as the main reason for a huge drop in tourism to Paris, down 27 percent in the first four months of 2003 compared to the same time period last year. Also, French exports dropped 21 percent, excluding military products.
As WND reported, anti-French sentiment surfaced last winter in rallies and demonstrations across the U.S.
We love Americans
Nevertheless, appreciation for what the U.S. did in 1944 is still strong among the residents of Normandy, said Yan Baczkowski, an American who directs the French government's Western France tourist board office in New York.
"You will not find a Frenchman in Normandy who is hostile to an American," he said.
Baczkowksi noted that just a few hundred meters from the flag poles at the Bayeux museum is a monument to slain U.S. soldiers.
He recalled getting lost in the area on one trip and coming upon two different homes displaying an American flag.
This was particularly poignant, he noted, because, unlike Americans, French citizens are not accustomed to displaying even their own flag.
"The French people love Americans, and most Americans love the French," he said. "It's evident wherever you go. What occurred earlier this year was nothing more than a lovers' tiff. They kiss and make up … but the media took it upon themselves to exacerbate the issue."
One poster to the "Frogman" site, however, said her 12-year-old son had a different experience while visiting a school in Caen, near Bayeux, under the U.S. government's People to People Student Ambassador program, which began in the 1950s.
At the school, she wrote, "the kids knew at least two words of English: 'F**k Bush.' I don't think that's the kind of international understanding that Dwight Eisenhower had in mind when he started People to People."
Unexpected reaction
The "Frogman" responded today to what he called an unexpected "wave" of reaction to his photographs with a rambling posting that contends readers misunderstood his message.
"When I write 'there's a troubling omission on this empty pole' it does not mean 'the U.S. flag has been removed,'" he said. "Equally, when I write 'Now there's another troubling omission here and another one there. Must be coincidental' it does not mean 'the French decided to remove all American symbols from the museum.'"
Nevertheless, that apparently is how it appeared to most readers who responded.
His posting Monday began:
I'M JUST COMING BACK FROM NORMANDY AND STILL HAVE TO UNPACK, but I wanted to offer you a new game to play, particularly if you're in for a D-Day tour this summer.
If you planned it, you may want to cancel your visit to the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie (Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy) in Bayeux.
Unless you would like to play this game, I told you about.
It's called: "Guess what's missing at a museum dedicated to the Battle of Normandy, 1944?"
Let's see if you're as good at this game as the dissident frogman:
The text was followed by the photographs then the question: "That game is piece of cake right?"
The "Frogman" wrote: "I could fire up a ferocious comment but I'm still disgusted by these three 'coincidences.' What's more, I couldn't get any lucid and convincing explanation for this 'fortuitous' accrual."
He suggest readers write the museum and mayor's office for an explanation and in today's posting said he would publish any response they give him.
The "Frogman," whose site is in French as well as English, did not reply to an e-mail from WND seeking further information and comment.
On his website, he describes himself as having had the misfortune of growing up in a "post-1968 France" that embraced the 20th Century's worst totalitarian ideologies.
Complaints about 'strange things'
Emmanuel Gagniarre, spokesman for the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., told WND the embassy has received so many complaints from Americans "about strange things" that he can't keep track of them.
A report that the French government gave passports to Iraqi officials to help them escape is one example of "these kinds of stupid things that we, of course, denied and didn't go anywhere, because it was just lies."
"It's too bad, because we are adults, we have an adult relationship, and it's normal between adults to disagree from time to time," he said. "Between friends, we have to tell each other the truth, and we didn't feel the Americans were doing the right thing, so we told our American friends we don't agree."
Recent meetings, including the G-8 summit and private consultations between American and French officials have helped normalize the relationship, Gagniarre asserted.
"We don't have any interest to fight against each other," he said. "We're on the same side."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33390
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/emptypole.jpg
Flag poles at Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy (Photo: Thedissidentfrogman.com)
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Angry American e-mails
invade Normandy
Web photos suggest D-Day museum removed flags to snub U.S.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 2, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
By Art Moore
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A small town in Normandy has been flooded with more than 200 e-mails from angry Americans provoked by photographs suggesting U.S. flags and emblems were removed from a D-Day museum amid testy relations with France.
The most provocative image, posted on a weblog called "The Dissident Frogman," shows an empty flagpole flanked by a British flag and a French flag. The photo is accompanied by the caption: "Guess what's missing on an empty pole, around a monument to the liberators in the Museum's park up front?"
The author said he had just returned from Normandy and suggested to readers that anyone who planned to visit the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux might want to cancel.
In a typical response among the many posted below the article, a reader called the purported omission by the French "one of the most childish, absurdly self-indulgent and hateful things I have ever seen."
But there is a simple explanation, insisted Magalie Bignon, spokeswoman for the mayor of Bayeux.
Bignon told WorldNetDaily the empty pole is reserved for the flag of the Sherwood Rangers, the British regiment that liberated the town from the Nazis on June 7, 1944.
"We are very disappointed that people would think we have forgotten what you have done for us," she said in a telephone interview this morning. "We have a great, great sympathy for all the allied people, Americans, English. Everything is done here for homage to our liberators."
Two other photographs on the "Frogman" site suggested American items were conspicuously missing from displays at the souvenir shop.
Bignon said the shop sold its entire supply, because so many American tourists come in June during the anniversary commemorations, "even this year" amid anger over France's refusal to cooperate with the U.S. in the war in Iraq.
She noted each of the town's five major crossroads has an American flag and the red, white and blue appears at the many memorials across Normandy.
France's split with the U.S. over Iraq is regarded as the main reason for a huge drop in tourism to Paris, down 27 percent in the first four months of 2003 compared to the same time period last year. Also, French exports dropped 21 percent, excluding military products.
As WND reported, anti-French sentiment surfaced last winter in rallies and demonstrations across the U.S.
We love Americans
Nevertheless, appreciation for what the U.S. did in 1944 is still strong among the residents of Normandy, said Yan Baczkowski, an American who directs the French government's Western France tourist board office in New York.
"You will not find a Frenchman in Normandy who is hostile to an American," he said.
Baczkowksi noted that just a few hundred meters from the flag poles at the Bayeux museum is a monument to slain U.S. soldiers.
He recalled getting lost in the area on one trip and coming upon two different homes displaying an American flag.
This was particularly poignant, he noted, because, unlike Americans, French citizens are not accustomed to displaying even their own flag.
"The French people love Americans, and most Americans love the French," he said. "It's evident wherever you go. What occurred earlier this year was nothing more than a lovers' tiff. They kiss and make up … but the media took it upon themselves to exacerbate the issue."
One poster to the "Frogman" site, however, said her 12-year-old son had a different experience while visiting a school in Caen, near Bayeux, under the U.S. government's People to People Student Ambassador program, which began in the 1950s.
At the school, she wrote, "the kids knew at least two words of English: 'F**k Bush.' I don't think that's the kind of international understanding that Dwight Eisenhower had in mind when he started People to People."
Unexpected reaction
The "Frogman" responded today to what he called an unexpected "wave" of reaction to his photographs with a rambling posting that contends readers misunderstood his message.
"When I write 'there's a troubling omission on this empty pole' it does not mean 'the U.S. flag has been removed,'" he said. "Equally, when I write 'Now there's another troubling omission here and another one there. Must be coincidental' it does not mean 'the French decided to remove all American symbols from the museum.'"
Nevertheless, that apparently is how it appeared to most readers who responded.
His posting Monday began:
I'M JUST COMING BACK FROM NORMANDY AND STILL HAVE TO UNPACK, but I wanted to offer you a new game to play, particularly if you're in for a D-Day tour this summer.
If you planned it, you may want to cancel your visit to the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie (Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy) in Bayeux.
Unless you would like to play this game, I told you about.
It's called: "Guess what's missing at a museum dedicated to the Battle of Normandy, 1944?"
Let's see if you're as good at this game as the dissident frogman:
The text was followed by the photographs then the question: "That game is piece of cake right?"
The "Frogman" wrote: "I could fire up a ferocious comment but I'm still disgusted by these three 'coincidences.' What's more, I couldn't get any lucid and convincing explanation for this 'fortuitous' accrual."
He suggest readers write the museum and mayor's office for an explanation and in today's posting said he would publish any response they give him.
The "Frogman," whose site is in French as well as English, did not reply to an e-mail from WND seeking further information and comment.
On his website, he describes himself as having had the misfortune of growing up in a "post-1968 France" that embraced the 20th Century's worst totalitarian ideologies.
Complaints about 'strange things'
Emmanuel Gagniarre, spokesman for the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., told WND the embassy has received so many complaints from Americans "about strange things" that he can't keep track of them.
A report that the French government gave passports to Iraqi officials to help them escape is one example of "these kinds of stupid things that we, of course, denied and didn't go anywhere, because it was just lies."
"It's too bad, because we are adults, we have an adult relationship, and it's normal between adults to disagree from time to time," he said. "Between friends, we have to tell each other the truth, and we didn't feel the Americans were doing the right thing, so we told our American friends we don't agree."
Recent meetings, including the G-8 summit and private consultations between American and French officials have helped normalize the relationship, Gagniarre asserted.
"We don't have any interest to fight against each other," he said. "We're on the same side."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33390
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/emptypole.jpg
Flag poles at Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy (Photo: Thedissidentfrogman.com)
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: