Interesting to see how stories bounce around various blogs picking up steam along the way regardless of whether there is much truth in them. Adam at Brainysmurf admits that he made comments about France’s military exercises with China based on a rather misleading story from Reuters without checking all the facts. What Reuters did was connect the exercises with the elections in Taiwan, and mention that the French government disapproved of the Taiwan referendum and is keen to build business links with China. Add in a comment about the cheese-eating surrender monkeys and there’s your comment piece.
Never mind that there was widespread condemnation of the Taiwan referendum from world leaders including George Bush. Never mind that it is inconceivable that France would do anything to help China invade Taiwan. Never mind that these exercises took place nearly 800 miles from Taiwan. Never mind that if this was meant to influence the result of the Taiwan election this rather obscure story would be big news in Taiwan (which it apparently isn’t). No, why let any of that get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
I don’t think that anyone else who picked up the same report and took its line about Taiwan at face value has (so far) offered any apologies for their comments. So full credit for Adam for admitting that he got it wrong!
Update: the BBC has a more balanced story on this, quoting a Taiwan government spokesman:
“If this week’s planned exercises are as large as those China held in 1996 they will clearly amount to an attempt to intimidate Taiwan’s voters,” Joseph Wu, deputy secretary general to Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, told BBC News Online.
However, obviously there is quite a difference between what happened in 1996 and what is happening today.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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