Usual Calm And Collected Debate From French Farmers !

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29294096

What a pity that the French military authorities didn't send the farmers in instead of the Troops in 1940 ! The war might have gone a totally different way.

[jourdain2]

Mikey - they think totally differently. I used to think that the longer I lived here and the better I spoke French then the more I would understand them. I've been here 12 years, have met wonderful people (amongst others - there are many very racist French people) and I now speak pretty good French. Now I find their thought processes incomprehensible on some things. Even the notaires were on strike on Thursday - house purchases, court cases etc. were all on hold (even if you had travelled from UK to sign and had to get back the next day). In Brittany (I have a friend who lives there) they have been donning the'red cap' (harks back to the sans-culottes and the revolution) and this has been happening all over the place since then. They were out in force in Poitiers a couple of weeks ago. The right to strike is so carefully enshrined that the gendarmes keep well out of it; in fact if you accost a striker and demand to pass - it is you that may be arrested.

[naomi24]

Where militancy against authority is concerned I don't think the French ever really moved on intellectually from the revolution.

[youngmafbog]

In some ways the French have it right, like two fingers to the EU when they dont like a diktak

[VHG]

Shows you how little you know about WW2.

Firstly, the Germans had been building up a huge arsenal of planes and tanks since WW1 which the French and British did not do. It was not that the French soldiers were bad but they were totally overwhelmed but a huge well equipped German army.

Secondly, at the same time the French were being overwhelmed so were the British. We had sent over a force of soldiers to support the French but they also were totally overwhelmed which is why they all finished up at Dunkirk and had to be rescued off the beach, thousands of them.

Thirdly, also note the French soldiers fought a brave action to hold the Germans back while the British (and French) soldiers were evacuated off the French beaches at Dunkirk.

Suggest you read up on WW1 and WW2 to see how brave the French soldiers can be.

See the Battle of Verdun in WW1 where the French lost over 300,000 men trying to stop the Germans taking the town. The Germans lost about the same number (exact figures are difficult to get).

More here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun

[mikey4444]

VHG...my comments about WW2 were meant somewhat tongue in cheek, so no lecture is required thank you.

[ToraToraTora]

they took out the French Military early on by bombing the white flag factory.