Re: What the hell is up with France?

Quote:

Hey. It's been a while since I've posted something off-topic and
inflammatory around here, so I figured I'd give this a go.


This is in regard to the situation over in France. I'll be honest: it
confuses the hell out of me. I seriously don't get it. I figured that
some of you European folk might illuminate the situation there and in
Europe generally for me. (This is obviously not an invitation to start
spewing acid social/political viewpoints; I mean, you can if you want
(far be it from me to suggest otherwise), but all I'm after is
information from the horse's mouth.)


As a member of a visible minority in Canada, I certainly can't say I've

never experienced racism, but then again I've never been approached by
the police, beaten or shot at, so at the same time I can't say I've
been
treated badly overall (at least on that score). So maybe lack of
personal experience clouds my judgment. It doesn't help that as a
Canadian child born to mid-'80s attitudes I've been raised with an
incredibly tolerant world view.


I can honestly say that when I started Junior Kindergarten in 1989, I
didn't see colour. The same goes for pretty much any other kid growing
up in the multicultural smorgasbord that is Greater Toronto. The only
thing you care about in that situation is whether a kid will play with
you and play fair. That was the time: we all just ran around in our
colourless microcosm, fighting with each other over toys and learning
how to print the alphabet between the guidelines on those practice
sheets the teacher handed out. Colour was nothing if you even noticed
it, and chances are you didn't. I really miss those days.


Of course, a few years later, we learned about racism. At the same
time,
teachers qualified it as "bad", but that doesn't change the fact that
they introduced us to this alien notion. This is around the time when
parents of the Old Skool could get pissed off and teach you to hate
people who have a different complexion than you since you're finally
old
enough to understand what hate is. Thankfully that was a minority of
parents, whether of the visible majority or minority. But then there
are
all kinds of other sources to indoctrinate kids with bull***. Of
course, more common than racism these days is sexism, classism,
homophobia, all that crap, let alone the popularity contest that ensues

in adolescence. I don't know what to think. Kids are on the right track

and then when they hit about 7 or 8 years old everyone decides the time

is right to poison them.


It's probably a good thing that teachers tell us all that stuff is bad,

though; if they don't, nobody would, then we'd be exposed to it later
and be utterly traumatized. I'm not kidding. If it weren't for the few
people making an effort, discrimination would be a lot worse in Canada
than it is. I'd been thinking lately that, even though it's nowhere
near
perfect, Canada has to be the best place in the world to live, and,
frankly, at the moment I'm certain I'm right.


I don't know why I wrote all that... I was probably just venting. But
this also sheds a little light on the way Canadians live. Hopefully
that
will help you understand why France's situation is so confusing to me.


For one, if anyone feels the need to run from police, then they deserve

to die. Any politically correct folks who object to this sentiment can
go off and love themselves. According to what I've heard and read, the
police weren't chasing those two punks at all, and they certainly
didn't
shove them into the transformer station. And of all places to hide,
really, a transformer station? (This includes a report I read from the
Toronto Star. Let me tell you about the Star: among Toronto papers,
it's
what a Canadian might call the *** disturber. It's basically
self-righteous, pseudo-Marxist hogwash, and even they say the police
weren't chasing the kids.) What it comes down to for me is that these
kids had done something that deserved to be punished. That's why they
ran from the uninterested police. So they electrocuted themselves. All
the jerks who are citing police racism or whatever are all just ***
disturbers who have been waiting for an excuse to burn stuff. Those
kids
basically committed suicide.


But suppose for argument's sake that the fuzz really was on their
asses.
If you cooperate with the cops, then your chances of death in that
situation basically drop to zero. I mean this is France; this is not a
place where the corrupt police will just shoot you in the back of the
head for no reason.


This whole thing is hauntingly reminiscent of the Timothy Thomas
shooting in 2001 in Cincinnati, which I studied for a class in the
winter term. Thomas saw one Officer Roach, who had him ID'd as a big
bundle of outstanding warrants, and proceeded to flee. Roach pursued
him
for a while, calling in for backup but getting none. Thomas got himself

caught in a dead-end alley, made an about-face, and (from Roach's
viewpoint) reached to his waist. Roach calculated that he was reaching
for a weapon and reacted, shooting Thomas in the chest once and killing

him. His reaction was definitely hasty, given that it turned out Thomas

was unarmed, and one wonders why the *** he didn't shoot the guy in
the
arm or leg instead, but Roach's stupidity is only worth so much blame.
Thomas /did/ run, and it wasn't even the first time he had run from
police. And what was he running for? Yes, there were fourteen warrants
on him, but they were /all/ misdemeanours, no felonies. Running from
cops implicates you immediately. It's just about the stupidest thing
you
can do. In the current case, there wasn't even a chase. These kids
implicated themselves in some crime or other running from their own
shadows, stupidly hiding in an electrical transformer and killing
themselves, knocking out power to many hard-working utility customers.
If there were a blackout suddenly and I found out that the cause was
two
punks running from a self-perceived police threat hiding in a box of
electricity, I would be consummately pissed. If I were more low-brow I
would relieve that piss on their graves.


But then again, maybe I just don't get it.


My understanding is that France and the rest of Europe are not
particularly immigrant-friendly, what with their homogeneity and
xenophobia. But if the minority in Europe is anything like the minority

here, then the minority itself is just as much at fault for its own
situation as anyone else. If they think the majority are snubbing them,

then there's no way in hell that rioting is going to improve the
perception. I'm sorry: lower-quality education is one thing, but riot
ideology is simply the product of a blatantly stupid mind. To wish to
improve a class's status by literally burning down the infrastructure
of
the country, the schools and hospitals and essentially the glue that
keeps a progressive France a progressive France, just passes the bounds

of stupidity.


What's worse is that the politically correct think that France had this

coming. Bull***. PC is the biggest sham since the Holy Roman Empire.
When somebody spouts PC rhetoric, it sets off the load-of alarm. I'll
never call myself a "South Asian Canadian", and I'll never buy into
riot
ideology. Some Canadians will, but that's mostly because they're high
on
British Columbian wacky tobacky (which I understand is a fine product
as
contraband goes). Once the high wears off, the rioting stops. Canadians

couldn't sustain rioting for weeks at a time.


Not that I'm saying Canadians are morally superior, but... we are. The
only way you'll get us riled up and uninhibited is by getting us
intoxicated first. Of course that's not hard to do, but that's beside
the point.


Be aware as always that all this is gross generalization... gross,
disgusting, absofrigginglutely filthy generalization. Most members of
minorities I know, including North/East African immigrants, are fine
individuals insofar as they don't go around blaming the White Man for
all their problems, if they even have any problems of note since their
lives are so great in Canada. My father is an exception to this, but
he's a senile and unbalanced *** disturber so he's not worth
considering.


Anyway, I forget what my point was so I'll leave this open to the
floor.
I want a better understanding of how society works in Europe so I can

have a better understanding of why the hell the rioting has gone on so
long. This whole thing is just too weird to grasp. But maybe I've got
it
right? I sure as hell hope not, because if I'm right then the human
race
is pretty much doomed.
------


Yeah, no. Just no. I don't even know what the real problem is in
France, but by your description of what happened and your own reaction,
I have something to say.

For someone of an extremely tolerant world view, you sure are a
judgmental, elitist ***.

First, the running from the police thing. You don't know what you're
talking about--shut up. Obviously you've never had a family member run
from the police, otherwise you'd be a little less all condemning, but
that still doesn't excuse your kill 'em all attitude, you morally
superior ***. Guess which part of that is sarcasm, go ahead. Then,
find out about the people that do these things, and stop taking the
paper's word for it. Then try and voice your opinion on how cops should
act. God forbid you could be educated about how other people feel about
the situation and their own moral climate, when it comes to such
things. I can't believe you had the guts to try and outright judge a
couple of kids who died and for a short while obstructed power to
others' houses just because they ran from the police. Would you treat
it any differently if they did the same without running from the
police? Maybe you should think of it like that for a while, if so, to
get an idea as to how fucked up your statements about them in general
are.

A part of your post reminices about childhood and racism. I don't care
about that part and the rioting part it leads up to. I'm talking about
the lives of two kids you not only discard in your statement, but
degrade, calling them punks, and even hinting that they were suicidal.

The fact is, what I got from your post, in your words, is that you feel
two kids shouldn't have been stupid enough to run from the police, and
that their death is justified in this. But, they couldn't just die, no,
they had to make the police look bad by involving them at all--they
should be killed just for feeling that they may need to run from them.
Not only that, they even used the last of their lives, while being
persued by police, to knock out power in whatever size area. This has
so disgruntled you that you came on here to bitch about it and say that
if you had the mind to, you'd piss on their graves.

If you see nothing wrong with THOSE sentiments, don't just go "love"
yourself, go love yourself into a drug-stupor, curl up in a little
pisshole somewhere in the back of your nation, and go to sleep,
permanently. The only use I can see for you is in feeding the wildlife.
You're an insensitive, ignorant, arrogant prick whose self-righteous
and exceedingly one sided views only help keep you feeling confident at
night that you see something others don't, and trust me, you don't.
There isn't a single new or intelligent thing in your entire post, save
potentially when you talk about children. However, you're mistaken.
That's not poison--that's simply called "Growing up".

Learn about it.

.