France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort 899
An anonymous reader writes "The National Library of France is not happy with Google's effort to scan and integrate millions of books into its Web search. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the library, wrote in an editorial that he is concerned Google's initiative to digitalize volumes at five leading libraries will reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture. Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps. Google said it was surprised by Jeanneney's remarks and noted, 'This is a first step for us; we can't do everything at once.'"
Let's see if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's see if... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Let's see if... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's see if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should a library donate its work to a for-profit corporation. If Google wants to work on this idea so they can sell more ads, then let them scan the books themselves.
Re:Let's see if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of like how the U.S. was "bitching" about Japanese productivity about 10-15 years ago and how we were going to get economically buried by Japan. That too turned out to be a bit overly alarmist, but it did raise some valid concerns that
Re:Let's see if... (Score:3, Insightful)
They are stuggling for funding and are frustrated that given the huge number of books they have, they cannot compete with a commercial initiative.
The European national libraries are full of treasures that noone can see, such as the manuscripts of famous European autho
That was the whole dang point of his remarks (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of the guy's editorial was: if English language works are the only ones that become searchable this way, that's going to make those works more influential. He's trying to get funding to do exactly what you're talking about -- granted, not to give to Google gratis.
I love how /. readers who didn't even bother reading the story are now accusing him of cultural bigotry, though. Very edifying -- though not in the way our posters intend. It's not like the guy is, oh, a librarian who actually considers what he's saying because he's trying to provoke a response in order to get funding, or anything. Must just be jealous of America. Yeah, that's it...
WHAT?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WHAT?! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it "invokes French ire" (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, I know it's awfully trendy to be down on anything and everything American (and certainly there are things that legitimately cause concern), but frankly I'm more concerned that Jeanneney's anti-Americanism is affecting his scholarship than that Google's efforts (with the help of the libraries concerned and plan to be inclusive) is bad scholarship.
Re:Of course it "invokes French ire" (Score:3, Informative)
They should LIKE this. This gives people all over the world in towns big and small access to books that they might otherwise never get to see for free (they'd have to buy the book). Google's effort will probably spawn others and that is where the French language/cultu
Re:Of course it "invokes French ire" (Score:3, Interesting)
It is the duty of the national librarys to preserve the literary history of the country , now what is
Yrgh (Score:5, Funny)
Nooo, it can talk, and it's got emotions... Run away!
Re:Yrgh (Score:5, Funny)
Remember kiddies, don't anthropomorphize companies... they hate that.
French Bashing aside (Score:4, Insightful)
or another american corporation site (like slashdot) has to some how not be american centric?
Me thinks the world has gotten a little too attached to our finger pointing. If you DONT like the way an established business is doing things, DO THEM YOURSELF!
Typical: he writes in a language nobody reads (Score:5, Funny)
Jealous, I think (Score:4, Insightful)
If his country came up with Google, then sure it's a case, but sorry they didn't. The best thing he can do is ignore it and not use it.
Of course he cannot force France and the EU to stop using Google, as that would violate their rights of freedom, which is somewhat more flexible than the United State's Bill of Rights lately.
Hey! (Score:4, Funny)
div style="journalism-color:yellow;" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd have bothered to read the editorial, you'd find that "attack" is perhaps not the most appropriate word to use. Rather, M. Jeanneney calls on his own country to get its act together and do the same sort of thing as Google for the sake of keeping the Internet from becoming even more of a monoculture than it is today. What, exactly, is so bad about that?
He's not attacking Google. His main point is "look at what Google is doing--we should be doing the same thing, for the sake of preserving our culture!"
Can the inflammatory headline. It's designed to get a cheap rise out of simple-minded people, and it doesn't make Slashdot look good. There's nothing wrong with what this guy is saying--and if he's attacking anybody, it's his own countrymen, not Google.
Re:Inflammatory headline is well deserved. (Score:4, Funny)
That meant *how* many weeks avoiding british food?
hawk
Re:Inflammatory headline is well deserved. (Score:3, Informative)
France is a wonderful place to visit if you speak at least a little French. I've been there a couple of times and generally been treated quite well, even by their notoriously prickly waiters. I love the habit they have of never bringing the check until you ask for it. Of course if you don't make an effort to fit in at least a little bit they will react negatively.
I think their attitude is that they are really good friends with us on the whole, and that gives them the right and duty to criticize us.
After 9
Re:div style="journalism-color:yellow;" (Score:3, Insightful)
I speak French, and I didn't get that impression from the article at all. He conjures the spectre of Americanization as a motivator, because increasing economic and cultural domination by America is a concern for many French people. Ultim
This is counterproductive... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it looks like he's mostly not criticising Google but calling for a parallel effort from non-English sources. This, of course, is laudable.
(Side note: I'm generally on the side of the French in these little Franco-American spats. I saw a SUV that had a "Boycott France" bumper sticker today, and considered sticking a note under his wiper that said something to the effect of "Y'know, you have the French to thank for the philosophy of free speech that allows you to show that sticker without danger of your tires getting slashed...")
Re:This is counterproductive... (Score:3, Funny)
Now, had that SUV been riding on Michelin tires, you would have had such a wonderful opportunity...
Actually, consi
Re:This is counterproductive... (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Huntsville, AL, whose main industry is military R&D contracting. This city makes its living off of American militarism.
I have never seen anyone as hawkish as some of these contractors. Most actual members of the military I know are either opposed or ambivalent to the war, or support it only insofar as they support their comrades-in-arms (and don't really stop and consider whether the conflict is just).
The contractors, however, scare me sometimes. Not all of them, of course... but the "nuke the sonsofbitches and let God sort them out" attitude seems much more common among the people who get paid to make the bits that do the nuking yet don't have to be directly involved in the process.
Unipolar worldview? (Score:3, Interesting)
What a misleading headline! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong translation (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe he should start with Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
English isn't dominant either... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Google burning books? (Score:3, Insightful)
On a serious note, this is no worse than the gutenburg project trying to digitize books, it should be an effort undertaken to make books more easiliy accessable. Not everyone can lug around 20 books, why not use a portable device to read! It is progression, you saw the church throwing a fit when Gutenburg invented the printing press because they couldn't control people anymore. Same deal, hundreds of years later.
Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I don't like defending France, the summary is misleading.
Mr. Jeanneney is not angry at Google. Actually he pointed out that the European Union (and France in particular) must follow Google's example and put on the Web the their own libraries so that it will be easy to access the works in not only english language, but also in french, italian, spanish and what not. I agree with him when he says that the preponderance of any single culture (in this case the Anglo-Saxon) is a BAD THING.
Actually the BNF already started with Gallica [gallica.bnf.fr] but there must be a common european effort.
And the people from Google should actually have read the editorial before answering questions.
They just don't like Google... (Score:5, Funny)
(Yes - I know how it works.)
Re:They just don't like Google... (Score:3, Insightful)
sheesh (Score:3, Funny)
Google Translation (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
This sensitivity tells you... (Score:3, Interesting)
If French has a word that English doesn't have, English speakers will happily pick it up, and it will soon appear in the Oxford English dictionary. The same is not true for French. And if the French are bad in this regard, the Quebecois are 10 times worse. The dream of the separatists in Quebec is a country inhabited only by "pur laine", descendants of the original French settlers. In fact, Quebec's cultural influence peaked in the late 60's, when Montreal was New Orleans North, a mixture of races, religions, languages, and traditions. After that the separtists started driving out, in Jacques Parizeau's words, "money and the ethnic vote."
If the French and the Quebecois get their wish, they may preserve their culture, but it will be dead, and no one will care.
Re:This sensitivity tells you... (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't about language, it's about culture. It isn't that the French see no value in American culture, it's that they see value in their own culture. Furthermore, they most definitely are not keeping it static -- it continues to evolve in interesting ways.
I can't comment on Canada, as I've never lived there. But France is a very interesting country, and their policy of cultural protectionism is not "enforced". The truth is that the French people care deeply about their language, their culture, etc, and they support taking active steps to protect it from an increasingly ubiquitous American cultural influence.
Frankly, it shows. When you're in France, you can hear a lot of French music on the radio, there's a lot of French literature, and just a general feeling of pride in their culture. Across the border in Germany, radios play mostly American/English music, local bands often sing in English (despite being German) because it's considered "cool", and people seem a bit embarassed by things that are German. Sweden is even worse. My impression, as an outsider, is that French culture is vibrant, and the rest of Europe is being Americanized.
And I think this fact is not lost on the French, who understand that preventing American corporate interests (ie, the RIAA and MPAA, for example) from culturally subverting them by, say, forcing some percentage of music played on the radio to be in French, by promoting French films, etc, has had a net positive effect. Young people in France are much more "French", it seems -- in the sense that they are connected to the culture of their country -- than people from Germany or say, England are.
Which is not to say that other European countries are not considerably different from America or anything. Just that the French, as a people, care more about their culture, and take steps to protect it.
And it seems to be working.
Anyway, with respect to this article, the title was mistranslated. [slashdot.org]
To Quote Futurama (Score:4, Funny)
Cubert: Hello.
Translator: Bonjour.
Professor: Crazy gibberish!
"Domination Ecrasante" of the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
The first type of post argues that the author is just trying to motivate the French government to launch a digitization effort for French books. That's all fine and dandy folks, but this article is being, and should be, judged on the basis of its text, not the golden intent behind it. The author alleges, and this is almost a perfect translation, the threat of an American stranglehold on the world of ideas. The "money-shot" here is when the author wrote: "Voici que s'affirme le risque d'une domination écrasante de l'Amérique dans la définition de l'idée que les prochaines générations se feront du monde." I don't care what he is trying to accomplish -- that is anti-americanism, pure and simple.
The second type of posts have argued that the author did not attack Google's initiative at all. Bullshit. The people espousing this point of view either didn't read the original editorial, or can't understand French as well as they think. The author followed a very popular line of argument among the French chattering classes: that the U.S.A. has grown TOO powerful, and that English is a lever by which they jiggle the world. (In this analogy, business would be the fulcrum). "Hyper-pouvoir" is the word practically coined in Le Monde, France's leading daily periodical for the grad degree plus set, and the anti-American editorials have flown fast and furious for at least the last 20 years. How French intellectuals manage to avoid noticing that English is actually spoken in other parts of the world boggles the imagination. Of course, talk to the average French teen who doesn't belong to the radical left, and they have no idea what the fuss is about. Unfortunately, it's the intellectuals that govern, not the teens.
Long story short, an editorial that talks about Google's initiative as enhancing the U.S. "domination ecrasante" (sorry about the lack of accents) over ideas is an attack on the initiative, not "yellow journalism" as one poster put it. The motivation may be noble, but it comes off as bigotry, and it's dead wrong. Knowledge isn't a zero-sum game.
Regards,
Astolpho
P.S. The most popular historical figure in France is Napolean. Now how could that possibly be?
Gauling (Score:3, Insightful)
Total fucking anti-French bullshit!!! (Score:5, Informative)
That's all he says. Nothing more and nothing less. It's not an attack on Google, and it's not an attack on English and it's not an attack on the US.
But that wouldn't stop the rabid morons from posting an inflammatory anti-French article, now would it.
Re:A little bit sore perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A little bit sore perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Well then, feel free to acknowledge and treasure it - on your own dime and with your own effort.
But I figure if Google is footing the bill for this, they're entitled to treasure and acknowledge whatever they damn well please, or not.
Typical Lame Soundbite (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A little bit sore perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
What I have a problem with is the huge population of Americans developing a hate toward other nations by default. Brainwashed by TV/media etc. Vice versa French citizens shouldn't have this hate by default.
Re:A little bit sore perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm, one of those three is not like the others...
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is - whether for right or wrong - France has long kept a strong interest in preserving their language. For a long time, American English attempted to do the same (that lasted up till the early/mid 1800s, on a less formal level - the rate of adoption of Native American words, for example, into English was incredibly slow during this time; British English by comparison changed far faster than American English). The French government, across administrations, has fought the adoption of imported words into their language.
This google initiative is - perhaps rightly, perhaps not - seen as a threat to maintaining the integrity of the French language. I think the approach called for was appropriate - instead of trying to force Google's hand, they instead called for European libraries to follow Google's lead.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid that they take it to the point of being absolutely nazi.
An example: a friend of mine, an archaeologist, deals with archeological literature in a multitude of languages. The two most prevalent ones are English (for obvious reasons) and German (as germans have a surprisingly big representation in archaeology). Still, the international community has no problems talking to each other -- with a standing out exception, the french. French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French. Who cares if the bulk of potential attendees to a conference doesn't speak that language? The french government (and unfortunately, a sizeable part of the society) pursues interoperability as strongly as MicroSoft...
Another example: a few years ago, out of a sudden, the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel". They are forcing their own citizens to be xenophobic!
On the other hand, English keeps borrowing words from other languages on a massive scale -- and this is one of reasons of its success.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Informative)
French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French
First, I worked for a French scientific institute last year (I am French), and I wrote some publications in English (proof here [inrialpes.fr]).
Moreover, I read an article 2 days ago saying that, in France, a lot of mathematical publications are writting in French and in the other scientific domains in English... No law here!
the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel"
Wrong. French government has no power over the langage... It's the "Academie Française" which is supposed to tell how to spell words, and which words are French. The government wants its administration to speak French, and so wants it to use the word "courriel" which was declared French by the Academie Française - so it's logical. What would be your reaction if the American government doesn't want its administration to speak English?
I had to say that the Academie Française is sometimes not really well understood by a lot of French people (me included)...
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Informative)
French government has no power over the langage
Not quite right. The currently applied Toubon law forces e.g. every advertisement material using non-French language to provide a translated version somewhere in the ad (even as a footnote, that's why so many ads in France have footnotes
The government wants its administration to speak French, and so wants it to use the word "courriel" which was declared French by the Academie Française - so it's logical.
The word "courriel", though official French, is never used, either in administrative circles or other circles. That word is just too ugly. Everybody says "email" or "mail" like everyone else. The Académie Française can scream all they want, they won't change that one, just as they couldn't turn "bowling" into "boulodrome"or "week-end" into "fin de semaine".
Languages are doomed to evolve. French is a language that does not want to evolve very much, but it is hopeless. It is never a good thing to try and resist evolution
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Informative)
The first point, government sponsored research papers MUST be written in french first. The official papers must be in french, but any number of translations can be made afterward. It's usually the same with universities and such. Since most research are sponsored by govt or uni, well, most papers are written in french. You know, when a french speaking govt. sponsors a research, is it weird for them to ask that the results are in french, for the benefit of the french people? How would you like, as an american uni, to sponsor someone for a research and he would submit a paper in arabic?
The second point is similar. They said that government related communications must use "courriel" instead of "email". I'd say it's a good thing, official communications should use the correct vocabulary. Using "email" would be the same as using leet speak in official govt. communications for example.
French is firstly a litterary language, while english became a business/everyday language and lots most of its litterary roots. English is made to be interroperable. French will usually use french, latin or greek roots to "invent" new words instead of adopting a foreign word. This usually preserves the litterary properties of the language. That's the big difference. Yeah, they can be anal about it sometimes, but then, who isn't?
Re:Don't panic. (Score:3, Informative)
I [lip6.fr] beg [lirmm.fr] your [univ-orleans.fr] pardon [inria.fr] ??
It is true that French scientists - who happen to have a civil servant status - are often required to produce reports in French. I don't know where you got the idea that they are forbidden from publishing anything in English.
Another example: a few years ago, out of a sudden, the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel".
Yeah, Heaven
Re:Don't panic. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Compete instead of Complain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Compete instead of Complain (Score:3, Interesting)
I am sure Google will not stop any French company or th
Re:Compete instead of Complain (Score:3, Informative)
No, "they" did not. The person in this context is not the same entity that tried legal action against Google, and has absolutely no affiliation. Please stop tying together unrelated parties in a mythical conspiracy web because of their nationality.
> They say that Google will index more English text
It will.
> and thus end up greatly influencing the public
Possibly. However, the solution proposed is *not* to stop google; it's to do the same themselves. This is akin to
Re:Silly Jean-Noel Jeanneney (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'll bite this one for a change.
I don't expect any slashdotter to actually even care for the original article (yes, the one in French) but just the summary ... let alone try and translate it with babelfish.
Here's basically what this fellow French dude says : Google, an american company, is trying to digitalize books, let's team up as europeans to continue to bring our own litterature on the web as well.
Of course his first few lines sound very anti american, just as the first few posts talked about frogs and all :)
This is not as much towards google as it is towards the French government and other EU countries.
Re:Strange... (Score:5, Funny)
As far as Google's efforts in other languages go, on behalf of the Klingon community, I would like to comment that I find Google's trivial attempt to court persons of Klingon extraction [google.com] patronising and ultimately meaningless, in light of their apparent indifference to the immediate necessity for action with respect to the digitisation of the Klingon language corpus.
It is evident that Google favours and priveleges English language works over works of Klingon origin, and such bias will not go unnoted.
Re:Strange... (Score:4, Funny)
Ahem. Posts such as this are required by law to be first in French, then in English.
hawk
Still, it's a little sad Google is a big company. (Score:3, Funny)
Not that kind of book (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly there's a lot of very valuable information which is in the public domain, which makes the legal issues go away.
Secondly, a lot of said information is in danger of being lost. The national libraries of our various countries hold one-of-a-kind books. One fire and they could be lost forever.
Publishers will probably have to start supplying the text of their books to google/amazon to keep their sales up.... some are doing it already.
Re:Americans already hate France (Score:5, Informative)
From my experience, they don't. They even wonder why we Americans think that the French hate us. They were really confused by the freedom-fries debacle. OTOH, the Parisians are different, and more difficult, but that's not just towards Americans.
Re:Americans already hate France (OT) (Score:3, Insightful)
My own experience is a few years stale, but I'll echo this. Parisians do come off as brusque and cold, but I have a theory as to why this is.
When the city you live in is home to several million people and the population density hovers around 25,000 people per sq [wikipedia.org]
Re:Americans already hate France (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
is it more fair for french libraries to donate free labour to google's for-profit venture?
there is a point to be made here about the state of the internet in general. nearly half of the world's population are indian or chinese. they have cultures and histories longer and deeper than that of western europe and certainly north america. yet, on the web those cultures are all but invisible.
history, it seems, will no longer be "written by the victor" but "written by those with a broadband internet connection".
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Informative)
May I refer you to: "American View on Korean Broadband Leadership" [slashdot.org]
Sorry, the irony of the way you said what you were saying (despite the fact that your core point is, infact, correct) was just too rich to pass up.
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'm sure if they want to fund scanning their entire culture into databases, that Google will be willing to index them. However, since the half of the world that is shelling out cash for internet services is
not invisible? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=glo bal&lang=none [alexa.com]
they are quite visible. In global top 20 web sites, 6 sites are chinese web sites.
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Funny)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care what your politics are or how you feel about Europe. A lot of France is full of stuck-up idiots. And Americans are criticized for thinking they're the center of the planet? Hell, we'll use words from any language as long as they stick. Oi.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you and the French insist that languages are static and worthy of preservation?
You realize that all languages change throughout time, right?
By your logic, if a language changes in a given culture, then it's not evolving, but degenerating?
Can you take a wild guess as to why the French are viewed as being stuck up?
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, "spimming" is bad because it means "instant message spamming", where "spam" was originally a trademark of Hormel until 10 years ago when it was used to refer to commercial crossposting to Usenet? Why do you support the lazy use of "spamming" when it would be more correct to say "The transmission of unsolicited commercial language by text messaging services"?
Your rules appear to be pretty damned arbitrary.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Funny)
Spelling rules (Score:3, Interesting)
Standard German is also decided [laborlawtalk.com] from on high, but not necessarily as efficiently as in France.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you misspelled evolution there. Had the Academie been in place for 10,000 years, frenchmen would still be grunting.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Funny)
I think you can leave off the conditional.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, thank you for this explanation as I hadn't considered that this was what France was doing. I've been REALLY concerned about how the English language is going to look in 50 years.
I mean, languages evolve and change and so on, you can't stop it, but if I were to pick up and read something written 500
Fragmentation is not degeneration (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and I live in the Philippines, which seems to have its own dialect of English. They tend to treat mass nouns as count nouns, for example. They "take some medicines" or have "a bowl of fruits."
But there's a simple solution to all of this. Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft.
Most users of MS Word install the program with default
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is that France, because of the Academie Francaise, is preventing language degeneration, unlike in the US, where any word you want you can put in a dictionary and people will start to use it.
Oh, please. Word definitions are determined by usage, not the other way around. People don't use words because they are in the dictionary -- words are in the dictionary because peo
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:4, Informative)
Remember that France was a colonial power back in the day.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:4, Interesting)
The English language is full of englicized foreign word.
I really don't get why the "email -> courriel" ("email" stands for "electronic mail" and "courriel" stands for "courrier electronique" -- same logic) example gets thrown around as if it was evidence of something really terrible.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm afraid so. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:5, Funny)
RTFA: The article makes no such insinuations (Score:5, Insightful)
While there is a slight hint of counter-americanism in the article, I did not see any particular attack on google. It seems to me the article was simply warning that they need to get off their butts if they dont want the only publically available resources to be from english speaking perspective.
Google translated article [google.com] (see:irony) [reference.com]
Re:RTFA: The article makes no such insinuations (Score:4, Insightful)
France is a democratic country and one can raise a case before a court, thank you.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just backlash. Expect more.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention there's no such thing as an Usian....
Now that is a NEW word that does not need to be promulgated....sounds like you're doing a bit of raping to the Queen's tongue yourself...
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:5, Insightful)
He simply points out that the effort led by Google, if is successfull, will once again be a powerfull tool to strengthen English (and US thinking) as the dominant cultural reference, and that this is a threat for all other cultures that imperils them a bit further.
He just calls for his European colleagues to join an effort to accept the challenge and match it in our European way, which does not always goes through private companies, although it often does. As far as I understand Google's reaction from the linked article, they do understand his point of view. I rather trust Google, but I understand what Jeanneney means and I approve his call.
How on earth does it come that any call for a non-american effort is immediately labeled as a threat to America? Why are so many Americans surprised when one states out that the disapearance of local cultures in the mainstream medias (TV, movies, Internet, scientific publications...), because they are overwhelmed by US might, is a pity, a loss to the entire humanity?
Fortunately, GwBush has just saved the French fries from oblivion. But French bashing continues unabated.
Re:French have a point there (Score:4, Informative)
Re:French have a point there (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed that would be better. But it's instructive to note the quite different plan of action that Mr Jeanneney proposes (my translation):
A multiyear plan could be defined and adopted at Brussels as of this year. A generous budget should be assured.
Mr Jeanneney's solution is a classical Fren
Read the Source, Luke (Score:5, Interesting)
Money-- and he has been. From an automatic translation (ironically via...) [google.com] of the editorial:
Or, in other words: "Hey, morons! I've been working on this, but I can't match their efforts when I'm being outspent by this much!!!