Yeah for France!! Yeah for EU!! I'm very glad to see the reaction that we are seeing to these murders in Paris. I would like to see every newspaper in the world stand up and publish this prophet/muslim cartoon. Antagonistic ??? yes, but I think it is warranted and would set a necessary precedent for the future.
Or we could all do what a lot of the French did......hold a pen in the air in support/protest. Yep, that'll stop 'em.
the french could do like we did and invade a country that had nothing to do with it, kill a bunch of them, get a bunch of our own guys killed and maimed and then declare the mission a success. In 1835 some comanches raided some white farms and killed people and a bunch of white guys took off looking to avenge the murders. They never found the comanches but did run across some Caddoes and killed them. what, besides assembling to honor the dead, can the average frenchie do, pray tell? as near as I can tell, the major US papers don't seem to want to run the blasphemous pix----except the WSJ. Time to renew my subscription.
How about dipomatic relations. Maybe we can rationalize with them and they'll understand they've been wrong all these years. They wont stop....ever....whether you like it or not turning your head and hoping will not work. They will continue killing and it will grow over time.
20 years ago I got to listen to a Paris cabbie go on for fifteen minutes about what a disaster was unfurling as they let in Gypsies, North Africans and muslims by the thousands. I got the same from a number of other French working class people. They saw it coming from way off but their elites wanted the cheap labor and so they got that and a lot more to boot. I keep hearing from our elites that we need all the cheap labor from the south but they don[t talk much about the side effects. The MExican government needed some people to live in their northeast province of Texas and so they invited Stephen Austin to settle 300 families on the Brazos. They got the 300 families they expected and then a lot of other things they did not. Worked out real good for some, not so good for others.
as Mexico learned in 1836, border control is absolutely necessary to guarantee the safety of your own people and it is way overdue in France. I recall a rant on the subject from a Parisian cabbie in about 1995. Similar steps should be taken here and Emma Lazarus's bs poem should be taken off the statue in NYC. The mobilization of large numbers of French as an act of defiance is useful because it gets them headed in the right direction. I have never subscribed to the American stereotype of the French as a nation of surrender monkeys. They have lost millions in their many wars and are rightly cautious, but they are also rightly proud and capable of severe brutality. Ask the Vietnamese, the Algerians or Greenpeace.
take a look at the stats on French casualties before the Nazis took over and the number of French civilians who died. They did not go silent into that bad night. And can we dispense with the language about people becoming other peoples' *******? Aside from being an inapt analogy, it is lowest common denominator rhetoric. As for the Algerians, how many Algerians in France and how many involved in this terrorist act? Sort of like blaming white people or ex army enlisted men for the Oklahoma City bombings. And my point re the Algerians was that the French were pretty ruthless in retaliation during the revolt, not that all the Algerians were pacified forever
who came up with the no go zones, what could go wrong. France is screwed, and will need a civil war to fix this crap. Or maybe the no go zones will lay down to keep all the free government programs.
WW I caused a lot of WW II to happen IMO. WW I caused the French capitulation in WW II because it almost completely wiped out a generation of French men and the primary front in the war was fought in France. They had had enough. I think WW II caused or created a German and Japanese pacifism that has lasted pretty much to this day. It is odd because now we would almost welcome a somewhat more assertive Germany and Japan as counterbalances to Russia and China.
A lot of people here know I love France, and I love Les Francais. Politics/Religion aside, culturally, they're are as close to Texans as anyone else in the world. They have a lot of pride (like Texans), and for good reason. The French contribution to fine arts, fashion, cuisine is unmatched. The United States would not exist if it were not for the Marquis De LaFayette (a true American Founding Father IMHO) and the Comte de Rochambeau. The Foreign Legion are some of the most hardcore badasses on the planet. The hospitality in the country is of the sort Texans are often praised for. Normandy especially. Paris is different, like NYC it's cosmopolitain and there are a lot of folks who aren't really like the rest of the country. That said, native Parisians are much cooler and friendlier than New Yorkers. It is a great country and I have no doubt some jihadist will soon have a legionnaire's bullet for breakfast.
Part of existing in the west is being offended without being violent. Ever political party, religion, race, gender, profession, or belief is ridiculed in the most unpleasant ways at times. Dealing with that fact without going on terroristic rampages make us civilized. Sadly, it's not that hard.
I will say that it is hard to visit the Statue of Liberty and still harbor strong dislike for the French. Unless you are English of course.
Have you ever been around two type A personalities in the same room? They often clash because they are so much alike. I see texas and France in that way.
PARIS — At about 9:10 on Monday evening, laughter and a round of applause broke out among the surviving staff members of Charlie Hebdo, followed shortly by cries — joyous if ironic — of “Allahu akbar!” The group was cheering Rénald Luzier, the cartoonist known as Luz, who on the umpteenth try had produced what they thought was the perfect cover image for the most anticipated issue ever of this scrappy iconoclastic weekly, which will appear on Wednesday. It showed a figure of the prophet Mohammed holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), with the words “All is forgiven” above it on a green background.“Habemus a front page,” Gérard Biard, one of the paper’s top editors, said with a smile, emerging from the staff’s makeshift newsroom and deploying the phrase used to announce a new pope. To find the right image, “We asked ourselves, ‘What do we want to say? What should we say? And in what way?’ ” Mr. Biard said. “About the subject, unfortunately we had no doubt.” These guys have balls. Link
Good for them. The best thing anyone can do is not kowtow to these fundamentalists by simply demonstrating their rights.
I agree with Husker. and am pleased to read he/she does not subscribe to the idea that one is wrong to make fun of a religion when one knows it could cause violence.
