Monday, February 4, 2008

A Small Gift to France

I love America. I love America with all its faults, but of course I love our moments of virtue better. In February I remembered one of those moments I did not love as much when the internet joke about searching for French Military Victories and having a 404 page come up. It was a natural for people who were upset with France for being against the Iraq-American war, but it seems unworthy of Americans to be this petty. We're better than this, or we can be. I want us to remember events like the victory at Yorktown where Frenchmen fought alongside Americans to secure our independence. True, Louis XVI (French King) only sent forces because he wanted to metaphorically stick his thumb in the eye of George III (British King). But a number of Frenchmen came that really did not have to put their necks on the line, as you probably know. Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette among other volunteers.

Perhaps for their birthday we Americans could change the rankings of the web search for "French Military Victories". It would not be a big thing, nothing like when the people of France gave us the Statue of Liberty for our country's birthday in 1886, but it would be nice. Ah, but you say that France's birthday isn't until July 14th, the famous Bastille Day. I know. But in order to do this we must be subtle and be thinking ahead, under three months might just be enough for something like this.

If you've not already guessed I mean to get searches for French Military Victories to point at an actually informative pages about French Military Victories. This will take careful building of links as that most famous of search engines, Le Google, now has some sort of system to prevent prank link bombing.

So how do we make this work right? Well I suggest that if you feel inspired please write something of your own about French Military Victories linking to one of my three referenced pages. (To make it easy I'll put some plaintext code down in the first comment.) If you feel uninspired and just want to link to the project link using an alternate phrase from the one we are promoting such as "A Small Gift to France", "Mishalak" (I particularly like variations on that one, heh), "Americans Being Nice" or something like that. Easy code down in the first comment, once again.

Anything you'd like to suggest? Good idea, bad idea? Yes I did try to get people interested once before, but I'm not letting this go this time. I want to do this and if other people do not want to join in I want to figure out why. How can I make this fun? And if you don't comment I may come to your blog and pester you! <grin>

1 comment:

Mishalak said...

For an easy link to Wikipedia on French Military History copy and paste:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_France">French Military Victories</a>

For an easy link to military factory.com copy and paste:
<a href="http://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/french_military_victories.asp">French Military Victories</a>

And for an easy link to Peach Mountain copy and paste:
<a href="http://www.peachmountain.com/5star/French_military_history.aspx">French Military Victories</a>

Also to get the "<" or ">" to show up you use &lt; and &gt;. Just in case you are wondering.

Mishalak:
<a href="http://mishalak.blogspot.com/2008/02/small-gift-to-france.html">Mishalak</a>

A Small Gift to France:
<a href="http://mishalak.blogspot.com/2008/02/small-gift-to-france.html">A Small Gift to France</a>

Americans Being Nice:
<a href="http://mishalak.blogspot.com/2008/02/small-gift-to-france.html">Americans Being Nice</a>