Re: french balls
While I support the French in their move against Google and generally admire their whole national-interest-first-and-the-world-be-damned attitude (I think the world would be better if more civilised nations behaved like that), got to disagree with a couple of your points there.
> I mean it really took off because the French were one of the few nations that actually stood up to the USA in the UN over Iraq.
The French, like other NATO nations, after 9/11 invoked and signed Article 5 of the NATO charter which asserted that an attack on one is an attack on all. That clause had always previously been understood to be a de facto declaration of war -- that was the NATO security guarantee that protected Western Europe from Soviet invasion, after all: attack France and you're at war with with the whole of NATO, including the USA. America spent fifty years pouring their money into military spending on the understanding that they intended to use their military to back up other NATO members, then discovered that the rest of NATO regarded Article 5 as a way of trying to constrain American military action when America was attacked. And the attempt to constrain American action started with Afghanistan, not Iraq. I'm not commenting on the rights or wrongs of this, but pointing out that, had France wanted to stand up to -- i.e. actually oppose -- the US, they could have refused to sign Article 5. Instead, they signed a declaration that they would stand with the US militarily and then made it clear that they regarded that declaration as meaningless.
The whole affair brought long-standing French attitudes to America to the attention of the American media and thus the general American public, and I can see why they might have been pissed off by what they saw. The word "American" is near-enough an insult in France, and quite a significant part of their culture is built around rejecting and despising everything about a country that has never acted as anything but an ally to France. And then that book claiming that 9/11 was faked became a best-seller in France, and then opinion polls revealed that a huge proportion of the French public actually believed it (I forget the precise stats, but it was way more than fringe conspiracy-theorist nutters; it was a mainstream belief). That's what pissed the Americans off.
And why the hell shouldn't it? Imagine that 3000 French people were killed in an attack and opinion polls revealed that, say, 20% of Americans believed the French government had faked the attack and another 10% believed the government had carried out the attack themselves. Would the French insult America? Even more than usual, I mean. Damn fucking right they would.
> there's gratitude for helping out in the War of Independence
After the War of Independence, French soldiers and citizens were welcome in the USA. After World War 2, American soldiers were expelled from France by De Gaulle, as if they were invaders. There's gratitude.
> I mean the chief surrender the French are known for historically was against a fully militarized Germany and if it's okay to be beaten by anyone, that has to be near the top of the list.
Yes, but the French also hold the distinction of being the only Nazi-occupied country that did not require German assistance to round up Jews and load them onto cattle trucks (The Nazis themselves were rather surprised by this). They didn't just lose militarily; they surrendered ideologically. Not all of them, obviously, but enough for a reputation.
> I mean what are you going to do - just keep charging at longbows and dying in droves like General Haig sent British soldiers against machine guns in WWI?).
This is a myth. British military tactics evolved faster during WW1 than probably any other time in our history. Tactics that failed got updated. Generals did not keep sending men charging against machine guns again and again and again despite repeated failure; they developed new and innovative and successful ways of trying to suppress the machine-gun fire. Quite apart from anything else, how do you think an army that never changed its losing tactics won a war, exactly?