European view on the US election

[Olivier]

two threads of mine have been edited of late, apparently by a moderator




the titles that have been altered are
"the real cause of the death of Arafat"

as been changed to
"Politicizing the Yasser Arafat's cause of death; or, what we don't know can hurt you.
http://www.israelforum.com/board/showpost.php?p=122881&postcount=70

I do not see what the added insinuation means... or what value added it brings




Bombing of French soldiers : Israelis involved

to

Bombing of French soldiers : Israelis involved, Satan unavailable for comment
http://www.israelforum.com/board/showpost.php?p=122938&postcount=126
I had not into of putting any satanic reference in the discussion

Overall, the objective of this person is harassment.
Arbitrary harassment because he does not share my opinions. Why leave intact threads which are either pure provocation of plain false and modify titles respecting forum rule? Why choose to distord the name of the threads I started?

let's see one example on naming a thread :

France: we will use the UN-mandate to continue the occupation of the Ivory Coast => this is plain lie, no french declaration was made about "occupating ivory coast".

and guess what, the guy who created the thread has been promoted moderator ! Now he can toy with what I say in total impunity...

Now If you want to see delirant threads titles just browse the forum..



Now what should I do ?
- I have first protested to the forum owner (newsguy), who answered that moderators are fully allowed change thread titles. This practice is discretionary and completely arbitrary. Any moderator can change a thread name to what he wants. Just because he feels like it.

Ok, now what do I do ? I can either
=========================
solution #1 - accept that the thread I start have a title perverting what the idea I defend.

solution #2 - stop posting and conceide victory to the harasser. This will also overjoy all here that do not share my opinions.


Now although it is certainly not good to give in to harassment, I have choose solution #2. As I wrote to the forum owner "you might as well have the guts to ask me to leave politely and I certainly would not insist".
But the idea that someone can pull strings and make me say what I do not want to say, just because he finds it fun is completely disgusting to me.

I do not know for you, maybe some of you find it fantastic to read a forum like this, but for me this is more than just hindering freedom of expression, this is plain pervert.

So bye all !


Overall I hope I have contributed adding value to the forum and interest to the reader.
I tried to start threads worthy of real debate and to documents my posts as well as I could! I tried not to answer provocation by avoiding the most aggressive of hateful posters.

On the statistic side, I started no less than 113 threads and wrote 1250 posts, which means I easily dedicated two hundred hours to the forum.

these are some of the threads I am the most proud of , Bush is elected, what can we expect in the next years?
• Good news for the Saudis and the iranians: Crude prices hit 21 year high
• Fight against Global warming : Kyoto Protocol becomes international treaty.
• teaching democracy (it's a picture !)
• If America were Iraq, What Would It be Like?
• Another legend down the drain : Iraq's Disappearing Elections (this one is likely to make a comeback)
• a no-win war against 1.3 billion Muslims
• Israel Has Long Spied on U.S alleges Counterpunch (I think this thread title has been manipulated as well)
• Moore's anti-Bush film wins top Cannes award
• Arab-Israeli Retaliation Tragic, Unhelpful
• Europe must not define itself against America
• about the dangers of blurring the lines between humanitarians workers and armies
• French troops deployed on Sudan border
• Military Draft in the US?
• Reaction in France on Sharon calling french jews to "leave immediately
• Torture by US forces is Iraq is not just isolated incidents (that thread is probably the one with the longuest debate : 481 posts)
• How can the damage of the torture photos be repaired? (with now a variant with the shooting of an unarmed wounded insurged in a mosque)
• Are we de-Baathifying or re-Baathifying this week? (that one was not a success, by it was fun)
• Rebirth at Ground Zero (don’t start optimistics threads here : no success)
• Real politics starting inside iraq? (ditto)
• U.S. Drops Effort to Gain Immunity for Its Troops
• 9/11 panel says there was ‘‘no credible evidence’’ that Saddam had ties with al-Qaida
• Big demonstration in Paris today against anti-Semitism
• europe grows : Israelis rush on europeans passport
• hostilities ending in Falluja? (lucky I put an interrogation mark on that one.. that was started in june)
• France to expel Muslim cleric over abuse

And it makes me extremely sad to realize all these titles can be perverted anytime…



…. So I have decided, that I prefer to remove some of my posts than to have what I mean manipulated against my will, it’s a bit sad, but it seems reasonable to withdraw from a debate when the debate turns out to be a fake. And of course I do not approve of the hatred shown by the people who manipulate this forum to their ends.

[Olivier]

(cont.)

"I wouldn't want to come across as a supporter of President Bush," Mr. Freedman said. "It was more of not being pro-Bush, but of explaining why Europeans, despite appearances, might end up not being unhappy if Bush was elected."

In poll after poll, Europeans have shown themselves to be fervently anti-Bush. In Britain, America's staunchest ally in the war in Iraq, a poll of 1,007 people taken last month for The Times of London by the British polling company Populus found support for Senator John Kerry over President Bush by a margin of 56 to 22 percent.

From America, a poll of people in nine nations conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in March found that opinion of the president and, by extension, the United States, had plummeted across Europe since Mr. Bush took office.

In France, the poll found, the president had an 85 percent negative rating; in Britain, 57 percent; in Germany 85 percent; and in Russia, 60 percent.

"People say, 'I'm very frustrated that I can't vote in the U.S. elections, because these are the ones that affect my way of life more than anything else,' " Ken Dubin, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid, said in an interview.

Referring to the prewar meeting last year of President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and José María Aznar, who was then the prime minister of Spain and whose recent election loss was attributed to antiwar feelings by Spanish voters, Mr. Dubin said, "I've heard the comment, 'One down, two to go.' "

In an editorial in March, the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian put it more starkly. "Senator Kerry carries the hopes not just of millions of Americans but of millions of British well-wishers, not to mention those of nations throughout Europe and the world," the newspaper wrote. "Nothing in world politics would make more difference to the rest of us than a change in the White House."

Of course there are Bush supporters here. Mr. Osborne is one: "I think he's been a good president for the U.S. and for Britain, and I'd like to see him re-elected," Mr. Osborne said in an interview.

So are leaders like Mr. Blair and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Many European thinkers, while acknowledging the depth of anti-Bush feeling, say it is simplistic and unfair.

"I was impressed by Bush's reaction to Sept. 11, and how he helped put the country back on its feet," said Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, an international lawyer and political writer in France, and the author of "An Alliance At Risk: The United States and Europe Since Sept. 11."

"Europeans tend to attribute the rift between the U.S. and Europe essentially to one man and one administration, and to believe that the mere election of a different president would mend the relationship quickly," he added. "Unfortunately, the reasons for the current Atlantic divide are deeper and more complex."

Some countries, like Poland, which has committed troops to the war in Iraq, have their own reasons for wanting Mr. Bush to succeed.

"Given that the Polish fate in Iraq is linked with President Bush and his policies, there are more sympathies on the Bush side," said Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a former European affairs minister who is running for the European Parliament. "We think he's been a decisive and courageous president."

But on the whole it is hard to find unreserved enthusiasm for Mr. Bush in Europe. Not that Senator Kerry is seen as particularly dynamic or gifted, or even as especially likely to solve all of America's foreign-policy problems. But he has one irresistible attraction: his non-Bushness.

Europeans' objections to Mr. Bush are multifaceted. Some are still obsessing about stolen elections and hanging chads. Others cannot get past the president's plain-spoken manner, his proudly aggressive anti-intellectualism, his ties to the religious right and his tendency in public to trip over words and concepts.

The criticism can be expressed in ways that are exceptionally disparaging of an American president.

The Express, a British tabloid, for instance, ridiculed Mr. Bush's news conference last month in an article titled, "The President's Brain Is Missing," saying his performance had revealed him as a "bumbling embarrassment."

The paper printed a series of unflattering photographs showing Mr. Bush's various facial expressions after a reporter asked whether he had made mistakes since the Sept. 11 attacks. "In what was meant to be a rallying defense of the war," the caption read, "George Bush appears alternately flummoxed, panicked, forgetful and distant as he struggles to remember what he's been doing in Iraq for the past year."

But beyond distaste for Mr. Bush's personal style are serious questions about what Europeans see as his American-centric, us-or-them worldview.

These began soon after Mr. Bush took office, when he diverged from the European position on a host of international treaties. Then came Sept. 11, the conflict with Iraq, the subsequent backpedaling about the rationale for entering the war and, now, the prisoner abuse scandal.

"The thing that Europeans cannot understand is how you can vote for a liar," said Peter Schneider, a German essayist and novelist. "Here is somebody who lies about something that leads to a war where tens of thousands of people's lives are involved."

Nor are Europeans thrilled about the American values they feel Mr. Bush has encouraged, in which anti-Europeanism is applauded as a virtue, people boycott French wine in protest at the French position on Iraq and Senator Kerry is ridiculed by the Republicans for being able to speak French.

"The idea that you have a leader of the U.S. who's not interested in listening to his allies is important in the way people perceive Bush," Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States at the French Institute of Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "He has a very simplistic view of the world, which we find difficult to accept. In fact, that we find dangerous."

In Moscow, the political commentator Aleksandr Yanov said Mr. Kerry was a superior candidate for many reasons, high among them that he appears to have a far more nuanced view of the world.

Writing in Nyezavisimaya Gazeta, Mr. Yanov said, "In contrast to Bush, he will never put the Bolshevik principle - 'Those who are not with us are against us' - at the center of his policy."

Nick Clegg, a British Liberal Democrat who is a member of the European Parliament, said it was "difficult to exaggerate" the European hope that President Bush would lose the election - particularly in Brussels, whose multilateral ethos is mightily offended by Mr. Bush's unilateralism.

"At the moment, a consideration or analysis of Kerry's positions is pretty underdeveloped," Mr. Clegg said in an interview. "Partly, it's because it's still early days and he hasn't revealed his hand fully. But what really drives people is alarm about George Bush's policies, more than some overwhelming attraction to Kerry.

"Kerry's greatest attraction is that he's not George Bush."

[Alfred]

Europeans hated Ronald Reagan too.

Bush is in good company.

But that is ok...you are still a free country for a little while (France). Enjoy your elections for a bit. Pretty soon you will be ruled from Brussels, by Germans.

Which is fitting in a way.


Besides, they speak better French in Brussels don't they?

:)

[TheyAre]

France will be ruled from Brussels by an Anglo-German alliance until the Muslims take over, anyway...

Then it'll be ruled from Tehran by Arabic-speakers. ;)

[Mediocrates]

That would be Farsi in Teheran ;)

[SteveMetch]

You can’t be too far from the truth if you just do the opposite of what the terrorist want. There is no question that the terrorist would prefer John Kerry over President Bush. I hope to play a small role on Nov 2 in not giving them the satisfaction they achieved in Spain.

Were did that one lone terrorist vote for President Bush come from? It was cast in Florida, the machine got it wrong he wanted John Kerry as well.

[Oh Jerusalem]

Enjoy the movie! :cool:

John Kerry is "The Thin Man" (http://www.crushkerry.com/video/onlythinner_frh.mpg).

[Justcurious]

Unfortunately, Fahrenheit is not available in my country yet, but tonight I'll go and see the new version of Around the World in 80 Days. Any comments on that?

[David_in_NYC]

The European view on US elections is insignificant. Europeans can't vote in them. The only reason Euros want to inject their opinion is that their allies on the far left are getting trounced.

[Mediocrates]

But they are actually quite angry and at some basic honest level, furious that they don't actually get a vote. And this is in part what drives their hatred of our politics. Particularly the Idiot French who seem to honestly believe that because some chambermaid pushed the baby Montesquieu out of her cervix they are the ratio sum ultra of freedom and enlightenment in the world.

[David_in_NYC]

Half the enjoyment of voting in the US is knowing that Europeans can't! :)

[Macc]

Well I know that if Kerry won't get elected the French will be pissed.