is permission from a "democratic" society
with "Western Values" of "justice" and "liberty"
to its police (secret and public) to harass a defined section of the population.
In Northern Ireland it was invoked to oppress Catholics still further
in the name of "security" - the "security" of a colonial semi-statelet which had never known democracy except, most of the time, at the parish-pump level.
It failed.
In France (a country which has never known equality or fraternity,
and liberty only during the course of the 20th century)
it retrospectively justifies, in the view of supporters of "The Caliphate"
(none of whom have read Rumi or al-Ma'arri),
whatever panic-inducing shootings they plan and carry out
in whatever grand temple of obscene consumerism they choose.
The colonial powers bring it all on themselves, stupidly, continually, continuously.
The French learned nothing from the vicious Algerian war of liberation, just as the Americans learned nothing from Viêt-Nam, and – way back – the British learned nothing from the Irish war of independence, which was repeated, with Partition (in itself a Crime against Humanity),
horrors a thousandfold in the Indian sub-continent.
Note: Bombs are 'out', because of increased "vigilance".
Guns are 'in', because they are widely available on the European, as on the North American
continent.
Block one rat-hole, and another one appears.
5 comments:
Señor Auban,
Your deep insights, I am sure, must be causing you much insomnia. How do you manage to cope with so much thinking?
Algiers remind me of a former OAS member who came here, Georges Watin, I think that´s his name. He was part of an assassination attempt on Charles De Gaulle in 1962. I also remember the dirty war, taken from the war experience in Algiers.
Please forgive my ignorance with this question: Is the French Foreign Legion part of the French army? Raul
The French Foreign Legion is indeed a regiment of the French army. I frequently pass one of its main barracks at Castelnaudary near Carcassonne in south-west France.
"…had never known democracy except at the parish pump level…" That's probably the best democracy there is or ever will be. Fifth century Athens was hardly democratic. You criticize an ideal for not existing anywhere, when, in historical fact, democracy has always been a groping for an ideal, imperfect, bumbling, and not wanted by most of the world. It's real existence is a state of mind, an individual's willingness to value the ideal, and to tolerate its falling short, and, yes, to enact a belief it can somewhere, somehow exist.
Señor Auban,
this is off the topic, I saw some time ago a movie about Albert Pierrepoint,the British executioner. ¿Was he really the last executioner in Great Britain?
and when was the last time the g uillontine used in France? Raul
Pierrepoint was indeed the last English hangman. (Scottish law is quite different, and the death penalty was not abolished there until 1969.)
It was a Scot who invented the head-cutting machine. Dr Guillotine merely perfected it and offered it to the First Republic as a humane means of executuion.
The last person to be guillotined in France was (surprise, surprise) a North African - in 1977.
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