Versions of the following have appeared online regularly, since 1992, as a feature of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, which is distributed for free via email every month except August. Ejournal subscriptions may be obtained via email request to: kessler@well.sf.ca.us

Here this file is one of a number made available -- hopefully attractively, all in one place, and relevant to libraries and online digital information work in France and Europe -- as part of FYI France (sm)(tm), an online service to which anyone can subscribe for 12 months by postal mailing a check for US $45, payable to Jack Kessler, to PO Box 460668, San Francisco, California, USA 94146 (site licenses also are available): please write your email address on the front of your check. Please email suggestions for improvements to me at kessler@well.sf.ca.us
 

Getting back to normal after last Tuesday's events -- as we are advised to do -- but without forgetting... there is a note about French reactions, following the announcement here...

* IHL: a reminder, for anyone who will be in France this month and next, that the new Institut d'Histoire du Livre is sponsoring the following events -- http://ihl.enssib.fr/

• Sep 25, tuesday -- Le commerce du livre ancien en Europe et aux Etats-Unis aux XIXe et XXe siècles -- Conférence publique: Bernard M. Rosenthal -- Lyon, Ecole normale supérieure - Lettres et sciences humaines, 18h30 entrée libre

-- and, Mon 9/24 thru Thu 9/27, all three of the following will be held at the Lyon Ecole normale supérieure - Lettres et sciences humaines, 08:30 to 17:00, register at http://ihl.enssib.fr/3_ecole/information/inscription_fr.htm --

• Le dernier livre: texte et image à l'heure du numérique -- Michel Melot
   
• Conservation et étude des imprimés éphémères -- Michael Twyman
   
• Typographie et calligraphie 1450-1830 -- James Mosley (in English)

But now also that note, concerning "la solidarité":

France is a nation far more tied to the Arab world than is the US -- physically closer, with a longer and more intimate history of contacts with the Moslem and Arab and general North African and Middle Eastern worlds, with greater personal memories of souks and minarets and the North African and Middle Eastern ways of life than most Americans possess, with far greater related problems of immigration and minority difficulties and reliance on petroleum, and with a far longer experience of terrorism and of wars fought on home turf... It is very different, in these things, to be French.

France also enjoys a reputation among Americans for being difficult, especially among US government people and particularly among US diplomats. Charles De Gaulle was no exception, in many American minds: with the French generally, in international relations, many Americans become impatient too often over the various minor frictions, and small policy disagreements, and petty cultural differences, which occasionally separate the US from this close ally. "Qui aime bien, châtie bien" would be well - translated into l'américain, and made a fundamental part of the US - France relationship, going both ways.

So I thought it might be useful, even important, to present here a couple of the French reactions to the events of last Tuesday and the ongoing terrorism crisis. "Talk is cheap", and "actions speak louder than words", and so on, I know. But the French have stood by us before -- as we have stood by them -- and they may be standing by our sides once again, very soon. The cost will be very great to them, if they do. It is comforting to see that however complex the world becomes the hearts of the French are with us: (my tr.) --

* The French president --

"A poll just has been published in France which shows that 96% of the French are in complete solidarity with the American people and with the American authorities. I have no memory of having seen such unanimity ever before. Above all, there is the problem of 'the reason why'. The impossibility of responding to this question. This madness, this absurdity, this cruelty. Nothing, nothing can justify this, and the French are, yes, I emphatically repeat, entirely in solidarity with the Americans."
 
"Those responsible for this must be found. The United States is now making a considerable and it seems to me very effective effort, using all of the evidence and any guilty parties found, so that one will be able to determine who is at the origin of this murderous folly. And when it is time to punish this murderous folly, yes, France will be at the side of the United States."
 
"We are not seeing here a clash of civilizations, because that would be saying that some civilization might be able to adopt terrorism as a normal and natural means of expression, as an element of its culture. I cannot imagine this, that any human society might adopt such a position. So I believe that terrorism represents more a disease of some society or other and, as such, it must be considered an aberration which must be eliminated from world civilization, as a matter of Human Rights."
 
[Question: "Many people in the world have said that this has been an attack on certain aspects of American foreign policy. It is no secret that France has had differences with the United States over foreign policy. Does this create difficulties if you envisage our participation in a coalition which will take all the measures which the United States its allies judge to be necessary?"] --
 
"No. One can very well not agree always over everything. That is the characteristic of any family, and it will be true of the international family as it is of all families. But there is one point on which it is not possible to have any divergence of views -- on which it is not possible to have differences -- that is the necessity of fighting against this perverse malady, this vice which is terrorism. And in this area it is not possible to have differences between the attitude of France -- the attitude of all civilized nations, whatever are their religious and economic and philosophical associations -- and the United States."
 
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actual/dossiers/attentatsusa/chirac130901.html

* The French prime minister --

"...I feel for the considerable number of American victims and for all who have been touched by this. Every hour which passes reveals more the extent and the horror of what took place in those American cities yesterday."
 
"We are entirely in solidarity with the United States, in the face of this test which has hit them. We are completely determined to engage ourselves, as we always have, against terrorism. We must not confuse terrorist groups with the Islamic World, with which we have friends and partners."
 
"France has been touched in the past by terrorism. We know that the menace exists. It is too early to tell whether this incident menaces the United States alone. Will other nations be involved? Of course we will cooperate with our European neighbors and with the Americans in analyzing all of this..."
 
[Question: "Will Cohabitation impede the functioning of French authority?"]
 
"No thought, no word, can suggest this. You must have no doubt that, in situations of this sort, it is together -- the government with the president -- that we act."
 
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actual/dossiers/attentatsusa/jospintf1120901.html

... plus, have a look at the French national flag, flying at half - mast over the Quai d'Orsay, at,

http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actualite/article.asp?cat=3&th=0&ar=2579

A French friend writes, "I believe that Washington thinks war, when Europe has justice in mind". I hope that this is not so. I hope very much that both are thinking "justice". The US leaders, so far, are speaking of and budgeting for long - term and thorough campaigns -- there is more opportunity for justice there. Colin Powell and the others have keen aversions, often - expressed, to the kneejerk retaliation strikes which Clinton tried. I am just not certain, myself, yet -- nor is anyone, I think -- of what must be done to achieve "justice" in this case.

But it now is just as easy to drop a hijacked 767 onto the Tour Eiffel, or Notre Dame de Paris, or La Défense on a crowded weekday morning -- or on Buckingham Palace or Trafalgar Square, for that matter -- or on downtown Cairo, the Great Mosque of Mecca or central Riyadh, the Forbidden City, Chadni Chowk or the Taj Mahal -- as it was to drop one on the World Trade Center in New York City last Tuesday.

Any idiot can do it now, apparently, armed only with a razor blade cardboard cutter and a shortcourse from some matchbox pilot training school.

As for current safeguards -- anywhere in the world -- well, if they can hit the Pentagon...

FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal                   ISSN 1071 - 5916

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