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Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by [W:186, 217, 273]

Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

And of course the simple truth is that neither you nor I actually know anything about ISIS that we have not 'learned' from the mainstream media. We "know" only what we've been told. That is not to defend the outfit, not at all, but only to keep things in perspective as to what is actually known compared to what is said. :peace

I know that they are savage enough to be cutting off heads with swords and knives. I don't need to know much more to realize what we are dealing with.
Even a good hunter has the moral conscience not to want to watch his prey suffer. A good hunter shoots to kill instantly if possible, and he's not relishing in the kill. He has an ethical standard. These men are no more than animals.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

I know that they are savage enough to be cutting off heads with swords and knives. I don't need to know much more to realize what we are dealing with.
Even a good hunter has the moral conscience not to want to watch his prey suffer. A good hunter shoots to kill instantly if possible, and he's not relishing in the kill. He has an ethical standard. These men are no more than animals.

Is it a savage act to kill innocents by way of drone or artillery or aerial bombardment or a rifle?

Are we the pot calling the kettle black? Do we have an ethical standard the prevents the killing of innocents?

Speaking only for myself, I would much rather leave this world by beheading than by days, weeks or months of torture.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

Is it a savage act to kill innocents by way of drone or artillery or aerial bombardment or a rifle?

Are we the pot calling the kettle black? Do we have an ethical standard the prevents the killing of innocents?

Speaking only for myself, I would much rather leave this world by beheading than by days, weeks or months of torture.

Find any post of mine where I have voiced support for any of our ME actions under Bush. You won't find them. That being said, ISIS isn't the same caliber at all, and as far as I am concerned, they need to be taken out in any manner that we can do it. I'd personally prefer special ops to just about any other method, but they are a scourge in the world right now.
In my perfect world, we wouldn't have anything at all to do with the ME, except strictly business. No foreign aid, no wars, no meddling at all, but since we suffer from this one world mentality these days, and we insist on mixing cultures that are incompatible, we have to deal with them.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

Find any post of mine where I have voiced support for any of our ME actions under Bush. You won't find them. That being said, ISIS isn't the same caliber at all, and as far as I am concerned, they need to be taken out in any manner that we can do it. I'd personally prefer special ops to just about any other method, but they are a scourge in the world right now.
In my perfect world, we wouldn't have anything at all to do with the ME, except strictly business. No foreign aid, no wars, no meddling at all, but since we suffer from this one world mentality these days, and we insist on mixing cultures that are incompatible, we have to deal with them.

Just for the record, I did not mean to suggest that you supported anything at all. I merely asked polemical questions, and you courteously responded. I thank you for your time, and I did enjoy our conversation. :)
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

Just for the record, I did not mean to suggest that you supported anything at all. I merely asked polemical questions, and you courteously responded. I thank you for your time, and I did enjoy our conversation. :)

No problem. I just wanted to make it clear that I am not a war-monger, and would far prefer that we didn't have to deal with this cultural chasm, but since we have decided that we must save the world, and convert it to one big western-style democracy (which will never work), I understand that we must deal with people who hate our very existence, and I am not willing to concede, for the sake of appearing "nice". In a war, as far as I am concerned, you had better be prepared to take it all the way, and take no prisoners, or you'll get stuck in a perpetual game of chicken, and the king of the hill is always the one who gets blamed in the end. Nobody really likes a winner.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

No problem. I just wanted to make it clear that I am not a war-monger, and would far prefer that we didn't have to deal with this cultural chasm, but since we have decided that we must save the world, and convert it to one big western-style democracy (which will never work), I understand that we must deal with people who hate our very existence, and I am not willing to concede, for the sake of appearing "nice". In a war, as far as I am concerned, you had better be prepared to take it all the way, and take no prisoners, or you'll get stuck in a perpetual game of chicken, and the king of the hill is always the one who gets blamed in the end. Nobody really likes a winner.

Having been to Vietnam in the US Army, I do understand what you're saying.

As a young man there, I learned that the average Vietnamese did not hate us as individuals, but they did very much resent our occupying their country.

Same way you and I would resent our country being occupied by some foreign army. The old "round eyes v. slant eyes" controversy. The cultural chasm you describe is very much a fact of life.

We lived in peace for years, despite the cultural chasm between us and them, in this case using "middle eastern muslims" as the "them". And we could still be living in peace, if only we sought peace.

Instead, we seek war as the solution to everything.

The sad truth is that once again in my life time, my government is an army of occupation in a foreign land. We have been waging war against the muslims (for lack of a better word), on one scale or another, for quite a few years, going into decades.

And our military aggression in their lands was done under false pretense, which makes it even worse. We had invaded Vietnam long before the Gulf Of Tonkin incident took place.

So, it's complicated, but also simple. Thanks again for the discussion.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

I might take the time to look for one. However, equating what I offered with Islamophobia is insane. What I've offered are the pronouncements of the French themselves, and they are the people claiming no policing in many of those areas. If that amounts to some kind of phobia, you should take it up with the French. It's simply what they themselves have stated. Seems like they would be in the position to know.

You have not "offered . . . the pronouncements of the French themselves". Try again
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

You have not "offered . . . the pronouncements of the French themselves". Try again

Exactly who do you think declared the zones? Why don't you explain to me how the zones, which you apparently now agree exist, came into being.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

Exactly who do you think declared the zones? Why don't you explain to me how the zones, which you apparently now agree exist, came into being.

I'm sure you've seen the words of many conservative Americans denigrating the "socialist practices" of France. The ZUS were created for the purpose of ensuring government funding for welfare purposes went to the areas seen as most needy - you know, "socialism". There are also lower taxes and special loans for businesses in the ZUS as part of government efforts to improve the ZUS

From a French city's business info page
Les ZUS (zones urbaines sensibles) et ZFU (zones franches urbaines) désignent des quartiers prioritaires dont les habitants souffrent davantage du chômage et de l'exclusion que la moyenne.
Les petites entreprises qui s’implantent en zones urbaines sensibles bénéficient d’aides financières et sociales.

more info about the "nouveaux ghettos français"
... the authors of the present article argue that current ethnic segregation processes in France are increasingly producing fully-fledged ghettos.
<snip>
Conclusion

A number of French enclaves labelled ZUS, or “urban renewal zones”, suffer from multiple handicaps: geographic (functionalist architecture and urban planning, ambient decrepitude, isolation etc), socio-economic (high unemployment, large number of welfare dependents etc.), educational (large proportion of high school dropouts and remedial-year pupils etc), medical (dearth of doctors, outbreaks of forgotten diseases etc.), progressively enclosing them inside a whole array of physical, social and symbolic borders. Hence the heuristic pertinence of using “ghetto” to describe some French urban renewal zones. Ghetto is a designation that is gaining ground these days in French cities because those who dwell in urban renewal zones are a “captive” population: they really have very low odds of ever leaving their substandard social housing.

I hope you notice that there is zero mention of these areas being police "no go" zones.

Another source of info is Daniel Pipes who in 2006 wrote one of the first American tales about "no go" zones.
They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are conveniently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations.

What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not fully control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassonne to twelve in the heavily Muslim city of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.

Comment: The proliferation of ZUS suggest that the French state no longer has full control over its territory. (November 14, 2006)

More recently, Dr Pipes has changed his view of the ZUS
Jan. 16, 2013 update: I had an opportunity today to travel at length to several banlieues (suburbs) around Paris, including Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, and Seine Saint Denis. This comes on the heels of having visited over the years the predominantly immigrant (and Muslim) areas of Brussels, Copenhagen, Malmö, Berlin, and Athens.

A couple of observations:

For a visiting American, these areas are very mild, even dull. We who know the Bronx and Detroit expect urban hell in Europe too, but there things look fine. The immigrant areas are hardly beautiful, but buildings are intact, greenery abounds, and order prevails.

These are not full-fledged no-go zones but, as the French nomenclature accurately indicates, "sensitive urban zones." In normal times, they are unthreatening, routine places. But they do unpredictably erupt, with car burnings, attacks on representatives of the state (including police), and riots.

Having this first-hand experience, I regret having called these areas no-go zones.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

I'm sure you've seen the words of many conservative Americans denigrating the "socialist practices" of France. The ZUS were created for the purpose of ensuring government funding for welfare purposes went to the areas seen as most needy - you know, "socialism". There are also lower taxes and special loans for businesses in the ZUS as part of government efforts to improve the ZUS

From a French city's business info page


more info about the "nouveaux ghettos français"


I hope you notice that there is zero mention of these areas being police "no go" zones.

Another source of info is Daniel Pipes who in 2006 wrote one of the first American tales about "no go" zones.

More recently, Dr Pipes has changed his view of the ZUS

Very informative. However, as I said, I'm not the one who says the zones are no-go areas. I'm simply repeating the views reported by the French themselves with conditions as they exist in a large portion of those areas, and they are familiar reports to all who follow this stuff. It's not the product of a conservative imagination gone wild, as much as you seem to prefer that characterization. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with socialism of any sort. It's simply a recognition of conditions as they exist in parts of France. I have no doubt some of these areas are very benign and placid, just as I also have no doubt some of them do in fact go largely un-policed. I can substantiate this, but I'd rather not get into a source war with ya. Just remember that the car burning and riots within and around those areas were widely reported here when they began years ago by both conservative and liberal media outlets. I know I remember, and the sources were French media sources originally.
 
Re: Muslim worker at Paris kosher grocer saved customers from gunman by hiding [W:186

Very informative. However, as I said, I'm not the one who says the zones are no-go areas. I'm simply repeating the views reported by the French themselves with conditions as they exist in a large portion of those areas, and they are familiar reports to all who follow this stuff. It's not the product of a conservative imagination gone wild, as much as you seem to prefer that characterization. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with socialism of any sort. It's simply a recognition of conditions as they exist in parts of France. I have no doubt some of these areas are very benign and placid, just as I also have no doubt some of them do in fact go largely un-policed. I can substantiate this, but I'd rather not get into a source war with ya. Just remember that the car burning and riots within and around those areas were widely reported here when they began years ago by both conservative and liberal media outlets. I know I remember, and the sources were French media sources originally.

You "have no doubt" but are unable to actually cite a single source. I wonder why :roll:
 
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