Diego Turns Back on US. Switches Allegiance to France

As readers will know, for the last several days "Diego" has been displaying a flag on his site directly lifted from the CPA-Iraq website. Readers will also know that after contact with me Steve, the webmaster of the site, became rather keen to distance himself from the smearblog, once he understood its anti-free speech, anti-Iraqi, arguably even anti-American nature.

As of this morning the riverSbend smearblog looks rather similar. Apparently the flag has not changed, but a closer look will show that it is in fact different. It is no longer linked directly to the cpa-iraq website but in fact links here to a site called libertys.com.

Liberty's, and this is just another twist beyond the bizarre by "Diego" is apparently "one of the few boutiques in Paris specializing in the sale and repair of old French clocks. "

So instead of using a flag from the good old US of A, "Diego" has secretly switched to using a French product.

At this point, and in view of the wonderful irony of someone of with "Diego's" anti-French attitudes having to borrow one of their graphics I'm undecided about whether I'll contact Liberty's to let them know of their recent parasitic infestation. I probably will but for now I'm just going to enjoy watching Diego sell his soul by sucking up to France. :)

Why Has Monsieur Diego Gone French?

We could speculate endlessly about what it was that finally provoked "Diego" to confront the fact, obvious to everyone else for some time, that he was no longer in any way attuned to American values like decency, fair play, honesty, freedom of expression. But what, I wonder, was the final straw that made our man finally pull on the metaphorical black-and-white stripy jumper, hang the string of make-believe onions round his neck, don the beret, shrug his shoulders, make that inelucatably French facial expression and essentially go "Haw-e-haw-e-haw"[1] on his website?

Just yesterday Diego was flying an American (Iraqi) flag in the top right-hand corner of his website. Today the flag he flies is French. Quite a turn about I think you'll agree.

The precipitant could perhaps be the fact that the messages I sent him via the comments on his riverbendblogS.blogspot.com hit home. There I told him that the Centcom webmaster had expressed his desire to disassociate himself from the smearblog. (By the way, there are some very interesting comments now featured on that site. Obviously Monsieur Diego is not deleting all the comments and I'd recommend anyone who'd like to see the kind of free speech that falls with boundaries acceptable to Monsieur D, to have a look there). But I doubt my messages caused him to go turncoat. Because also in the same comment section yesterday I strongly advised our man that he change his site to prominently feature an apology to Wendy McElroy, in the hope of heading off serious repercussions and he obviously didn't take that advise.

No. I'd suggest that the incident that finally made Monsieur Diego go rogue and threw him into the open arms of the French, was the fact that yesterday Steve, webmaster at Centcom (Yes folks the Centcom) sent him an email [2](as he reported to me), in which he asked of Diego:

"Please dissociate this site with the Coalition Provisional Authority or consider the penalties for associating yourself falsely with a US Government entity."

On balance, I strongly suspect that it was this incident which finally encouraged Monsieur Diego to "go French" and disassociate himself with the land of his birth and form new alliances across the Atlantic.

Well I just hope when you're munching on those snails and frogs legs this evening, Monsieur Diego, you don't get all nostalgic for a MacDonalds or a good old American steak. You've made your choice Monsieur. Au revoir and bon riddance!

[1] I really, really hope my French friends (honestly they do exist) can forgive me all this in the name of satire...
[2] If I'm correct in assuming it was Steve's email which changed Monsieur D's mind then this inevitably means I'm right that the email address I gave him is "live". If so, in view of Blogger's rather intransigent stance on the continued existance of the smearblog, it may be that I will publish the address here, if I feel there is no other recourse open to me. (More on Blogger's intransigence later, when I report on a rather confused email I received from them yesterday)