Our good friend Saru the White Wizard recently had this to say about reports of French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie defending arms sales to China:
No time to write this up as a blog, so if any of you want to pick it
up, have at it.I don’t think any of you know this, but I can speak a little bit of French. Or at least, I can understand a little bit of it. For example, I read in the FT this morning that the French Minister of Defense, one Michele Alliot-Marie (Condi, she ain’t) told an FT reporter:
“The lifting of the [EU arms] embargo could be a better protection forus than maintaining it… China is rapidly developing its industry, and today our experts say that in five years China could make exactly the same arms that we have today. And they will do it if they cannot
imports. So maybe if we can sell them arms, they will not make them. And in five years’ time, they will not have the technology to make them.”English translation: “If we don’t hurry and sell the Chinese arms, think of all the business we’ll lose out on!”
Is this woman fucking serious? First of all, in what way does China threaten France such that it needs “better protection.” And who the hell is this “us” to whom she refers?
And isn’t her logic flawless? “If we sell them arms, they won’t make them. And, the won’t have the technology to make them” Great idea! Only one small problem – the technology won’t matter because they’ll already have the arms!
Maybe if the French had just given Sadam chemical, biological, or nuclear arms years ago, he wouldn’t have tried to make them, and then this whole nasty war could have been avoided.
Anyone who thought that absurdism died with Ionesco (and yes, I know he was Romanian, but the French at him up) has a lot to be excited about with someone like this making public statements.
I mean hey, don’t they say, “give a man a gun, he kills for a day, teach a man to make guns, he kills for a lifetime?” Makes perfect sense if you think in terms of axioms.
Continue reading French lessons: French must sell arms to the Chinese now.. or else