Quotulatiousness

October 1, 2012

France, 1940: If you can’t beat ’em, sleep with them?

Filed under: Europe, France, Germany, History, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:16

The ignominy of military defeat and occupation in 1940 was bad for French civilian morale, but according to Patrick Buisson, the female population adapted to the new reality much faster than anyone would have expected:

Everyone was surprised the tall, blond invading newcomers did not set about raping the population as the French had expected. Instead, they handed out bread and tarts.

Moreover, they were so handsome and so brave in comparison with the drunken French soldiers who had surrendered the fight.

Soon, every French child was crying out that he wanted to be German, while every young French girl was lusting after the newcomers as though they were allies, not enemies, offering them oranges and standing on tip-toe to look into the plush interior of their limousines.

And French housewives, deprived of companionship while their soldier husbands were held prisoner, were happily sleeping with the enemy.

The French have long sought to draw a veil over these aspects of the occupation, claiming heroic acts of resistance during the period when, in fact, they were little more than collaborators.

Now, with uncharacteristic daring, Patrick Buisson, director of France’s History Channel, TF1, has set the record straight by writing a book, whose titillating title — 1940-1945: The Erotic Years — shows the extent to which his fellow countrymen actually enjoyed their wartime experiences.

[. . .]

Naturally, there were the inevitable consequences. While the British birth-rate fell during the dark days of the Blitz, the French birth-rate soared in the years after the Germans arrived, despite the fact that more than two million redblooded French men were locked away in prison camps.

Up to 30 per cent of live births were illegitimate in some parts of Paris. This gave the French authorities a particular headache. For a long time, they had been lamenting that France was underpopulated; now they did not know whether to rejoice or deplore each new arrival.

Update: Just realized the original story is actually from a few years back, so I omitted the phrase “a new book”.

Michigan’s unions battle for a veto right over state law

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:10

In the Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia looks at a proposed constitutional amendment in Michigan which would give unions a huge veto power over state law:

The Michigan Supreme Court recently approved the placement of a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the so-called Protect Our Jobs amendment would give public-employee unions a potent new tool to challenge any laws — past, present or future — that limit their benefits or collective-bargaining powers. It would also bar Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state in which mandatory union dues are not a condition of employment. The budget implications are dire.

[. . .]

The amendment says that no “existing or future laws shall abridge, impair or limit” the collective-bargaining rights of Michigan workers. That may sound innocuous, but according to Patrick Wright of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the amendment would hand a broad mandate to unions to challenge virtually any law they don’t like.

[. . .]

The ballot initiative states that it would “override state laws that regulate hours and conditions of employment to the extent that those laws conflict with collective bargaining agreements.” In other words, collective-bargaining agreements negotiated behind closed doors would trump the legislature — a breathtaking power grab that would turn unions into a super legislature.

Perhaps the biggest upside for unions is that the proposal would prohibit Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state. Regaining its competitive position with respect to the 23 right-to-work states that have become attractive to manufacturers, even auto makers, would be unlikely. Rather, labor would get a field-tested strategy for scrapping those states’ right-to-work laws with ballot referendums.

Warren Ellis: Blasphemy charges are the modern replacement for libel suits

Filed under: Law, Media, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:55

In his weekly column in Vice, Warren Ellis explains why we should expect to see much more activity filed under “blasphemy” than “libel” going forward:

All sides of a society can agree that speech should be free. Until, of course, it isn’t. George W Bush famously said, “There ought to be limits to freedom.” It’s the right to free speech until you say something that some people really don’t like. Often, something that the offended parties find it really hard to criminalise. It’s not quite as easy as it used to be to get libel, slander or malicious communication charges to stick to uncomfortable statements. Luckily for the uncomfortable, conservative countries have an ancient recourse. Something that was invented many thousands of years ago for the express purpose of keeping the uppity in line. Since summer, it’s been used in Russia as a political lever to shut people up, and in Greece too.

Blasphemy. The act of insulting something regarded as holy. Thomas Aquinas characterised it as “a sin against God”. He was big on the idea that sinners needed to be killed, was our Thomas, with the ethical caveat/fig-leaf that it should be secular courts that saw people “exterminated” so that the Church could pretend to have clean hands. Because, apparently, a god is not such a big thing that it cannot be made to feel sad.

Of course, the gods and prophets don’t even notice. The latter are dead and the former never showed any signs of life. Blasphemy, like heresy, is thoughtcrime: a questioning of institutions, authority structures and the way we live. When I wipe shit on the face of your god, I’m not doing it to your god – I’m doing it to you, because it’s you who serve it and you who use it as justification of your position. It’s a political act. It does, however, allow the state to pick up one of its most ancient weapons.

Vikings beat Lions 20-13 in Detroit

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

Minnesota finally broke the longest in-division losing streak in the NFL, having lost 11 straight divisional games up to yesterday’s visit to Ford Field in Detroit. The Vikings never trailed after Percy Harvin took the opening kickoff 105 yards for a touchdown. Later in the game, punt returner Marcus Sherels went 77 yards to score a second special teams TD. Adrian Peterson got his first 100-yard rushing game of the season, and Christian Ponder continued his zero interception streak going for another game (but it was the defence and special teams players who won the game … with a lot of help from Detroit’s butter-fingered wide receiving corps).

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