Guns Guns Guns, Now Paris!

[Malbec]

The difference is that here people get to try and persuade others to come around to their way of thinking without violence and then settle the matter with a vote. And when we lose a vote, we don't start shooting people and blowing people up.

You missed my point.

You regularly vote for governments that have (whether Democrat or Republican) continued to kill and support governments that kill Muslims, militants or civilian. Not only that but you fund the killing of civilians directly by paying taxes. You fail to oppose your governments actions by continuing to pay taxes and refusing to voice your opposition to military actions performed by your government. You are therefore as responsible for civilian deaths as the guy pulling the trigger and therefore are a legitimate target for what you would define as a terrorist attack.

See what your logic is like when its flipped around on you?

[Rollo]

The difference is that here people get to try and persuade others to come around to their way of thinking without violence and then settle the matter with a vote. And when we lose a vote, we don't start shooting people and blowing people up.

Historical aside:
Except for the election on November 6, 1860...

[Starter]

You missed my point.

You regularly vote for governments that have (whether Democrat or Republican) continued to kill and support governments that kill Muslims, militants or civilian. Not only that but you fund the killing of civilians directly by paying taxes. You fail to oppose your governments actions by continuing to pay taxes and refusing to voice your opposition to military actions performed by your government. You are therefore as responsible for civilian deaths as the guy pulling the trigger and therefore are a legitimate target for what you would define as a terrorist attack.

See what your logic is like when its flipped around on you?

This quote from you above "....refusing to voice your opposition to military actions performed by your government."
is not truthful, as even a casual acquaintance with media sources here will attest. There is abundant opposition to many of our governments actions.

[Starter]

Historical aside:
Except for the election on November 6, 1860...

The rare exception as opposed to the rule in many places.

[janvanvurpa]

This quote from you above "....refusing to voice your opposition to military actions performed by your government."
is not truthful, as even a casual acquaintance with media sources here will attest. There is abundant opposition to many of our governments actions.

For all the good it does...

[Starter]

For all the good it does...

True.

[Spafranco]

Well just make sure that when you come to buy tickets for my stand-up show you ask the ticket officer 'excuse me, are there going to be any jokes about Hitler, Himmler, Amin, Pol Pot or 9/11 in this show?' Just to make sure


Might not be my best gag ever, but that's an example of a joke that includes all of those topics. Was it in bad taste?

Give me an example of what you would consider a joke. If you feel that it is funny to make them look like fools and you are Jewish then I would give some credibility to your poking fun in sum way at Hitler or Himmler. What that joke would or could be is anathema to me.

[Spafranco]

Yeah a very sad series of events and thankfully no more coppers lost their lives.

I understand why people choose religion but it's not for me. I was brought up as a catholic just for reference here. My family are from the North West of Northern Ireland. My parents claim to be religious, sort of, but have never pushed it onto me and don't practise it. I've never really believed in God and just went along with things because of school and extended family really. By my late teens I barely gave it another thought.

Henner, I believe that religion in the case of Northern Ireland was just how the cards lay for Nationalist and Loyalists. Those planted from Scotland were Protestant and Presbyterians. The displaced in Northern Ireland were the Catholics. Religion in this case got used by groups that were merely thugs and I doubt half of them had any true allegiance to the religion of their birth.
Henner, I saw a Panorma TV show, I believe it is BBC that showed a group of men now in their 50's and 60's that played football (soccer) together as kids. They were even on a team. This was in the late 60's and 70's and these kids were both Catholic and Protestant. Some went off and joined paramilitary groups. One of them was Bobby Sands. I was intrigued to learn that Bobby Sands was both Catholic and Protestant. Mixed marriage.

[Spafranco]

Has it been mentioned that the police chief committed suicide?

[Rudy Tamasz]

As Tazio has suggested the French have a long complex relationship with their Algerian and sub-Saharan African migrants. First, a bitter war of independence where the French were pretty brutal then widespread discrimination against Algerian migrants in France. Ever heard of banlieue? The dictionary will tell you its an innocent French word for suburb. The reality is that these are miserable apartment blocks on the outskirts of big cities where undesirables like Algerians, blacks and the poorest and worst of French society find themselves. Its nearly impossible for people there to climb out of poverty as those postcodes are blacklisted. Frequently CVs with those postcodes are simply binned before they're even reviewed for job applications. I would watch La Haine if you want to see what life there is like. As for the French police, their tendency to recourse to violence at the first opportunity is well known. Every time we fly there my wife, caucasian French, reminds me never to look the police in the eye and never EVER talk back regardless of the circumstances. Its easy to see how resentment and frustration boil over into anger and eventually violence. For the vast majority of those in the banlieue their outlets are the riots that hit those areas quite regularly. While I abhor terrorism I can however understand how these three, brought up and raised in the circumstances they were in chose a more organised and violent way of hitting back at the system. And of course it is never possible to prove institutional racism in a country where data collection regarding ethnic origin is simply not performed, hence institutional racism simply does not exist. The French state really is secular in every possible way for better or for worse.

What you describe sounds a lot like what you had said about Syria. Le Francois comme Assad? C'est une idee tres interessante... Now maybe those poor lads were freedom fighters. Just kidding.

Seriously, though, democracies work best when they have a certain degree of homogeneity, when you have a core of the society that stays on the same page, more or less. There might be class divisions and conflicting interests, but everybody plays by the rules. If you bring in a minority with a totally different culture, which is too large or resistant to integration, or both, that's a recipe for trouble. I'm not sure there's a ready made solution for the problems of the French, but then they are a resourceful people who have survived worse situations.