Wednesday, June 29, 2011

ATTENTION: BAD NEWS FROM FRANCE E-MAIL IS STILL BOGUS

Once again people are forwarding an e-mail that speaks in panicked and apocalyptic terms about anti-Semitism in France.

'BAD NEWS FROM FRANCE - REAL BAD'

It's the same e-mail as it was two years ago. Three years ago. Five years ago.
And eight years ago.

QUOTE:
"I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing. Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France. In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus, in Paris, the words 'Dirty Jew' were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months."

Pretty heavy stuff. But it's garbage.


QUOTE:
"Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well-directed pressure. Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of good conscience that you know and let them know that you - and the people that you care - about need their help."

Please do NOT forward this chain letter. Not if you want your family, friends, and coworkers to abstain from flaming you.

[NOTE: If I am among your family, friends, or coworkers, you might expect me to savage you thoroughly. It all depends on my mood. If someone has been unpleasant to me recently, you will have just volunteered to have me unload all my aggression, angst, childhood trauma, sexual frustration, and the inchoate fears that surface when the lights are out all over you. I'm vindictive, and passive-aggressive, plus I've got Aspergers and several neuroses.
Just guessing, but you probably do not want to know all about that, do you?
So don't do this. Please do your research, and stop being so credulous. Seriously. If I can remember the damned epistle from several years ago, so can you. Really.]



I first wrote about it here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/11/bad-news-from-france.html

QUOTE:
"It's an absolute crock. Total bushwa. Complete and utter nonsense.
Balderdash, claptrap, and fiddlesticks."


It was ALL of those descriptives then. It still is. Nothing has changed.

The people who keep forwarding it are all well meaning. Panicked hysterics, but well-meaning.
I believe I'm supposed to give them credit for being well-meaning.
Brownie Points, or something.

Sorry, I ran out of those years ago.
Please stop sending me this letter.


The oldest version of that letter dates from 2002. It was unattributable and unsourced then. Each new circulation of the letter has been just as unattributed and unsourced, when not spuriously ascribed to someone who subsequently denies any and all involvement.

http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/11/bad-news-from-france.html

Crap. Fermented refuse. Roadkill. Skunk in the compost heap.
Remember that.


Thank you.


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

2 comments:

Feh! said...

And, after Mohammed Merah's massacre, it is being circulated all over again.

The back of the hill said...

Damned letter cropping up again.

Read this:
Post 1.
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/11/bad-news-from-france.html.

And this:
Post 2.
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2011/06/attention-bad-news-from-france-e-mail.html.

Please forward apologies and disavowals of this damned epistle to your family, your friends, and your co-workers, and especially ALL of the people of good conscience that you have afflicted with this thing.

Thank you.

---ATBOTH
April 16, 2012.

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