From: pelegrin@alize.greco-prog.fr (Francois PELLEGRINI)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.french,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Guns, and the necessity to trust our governement.
Keywords: guns and hypocrisy
Date: 13 Sep 92 17:41:17 GMT
Organization: GRECO Programmation du CNRS - Bordeaux,France

In article <1992Sep9.160019.5222@morrow.stanford.edu>, silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep9.135722.12694@cbnewsc.cb.att.com> rats@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (Morris the Cat) writes:
|> >In <1992Sep7.091223.17271@greco-prog.fr> Francois PELLEGRINI states:

|> [In regards to a 'discussion' of the US Supreme Court ruling regarding  
|> the kidnapping of a Mexican doctor alleged to have been involved in the
|> torture and murder of Kiki Camerena.]

|> >|> 	This doens't allow U.S. citizans to play Rambo in other
|> >|> countries. It allows the U.S. goverment to arrest someone who is
|> >|> trying to escape justice in the U.S.

|> >|	There are organizations like Interpol to do that. By acting like this,
|> >|the U.S. acts just as a terrorist nation.

|> >Uh huh. Kindly explain to us dumb Americans just how Interpol has managed
|> >to arrest ANYONE in all it's years of existance. One example would do
|> >just fine.

	To 'Morris the Cat':

	As a general example, I would cite the exchange of informations
between German, Italian, Dutch, Asian (I don't remember which of them) and
French police forces, which has lead to the dismanteling of a drug network
in the 1980's (maybe 1984). The involved people were arrested in these
countries by the LOCAL police forces, in a LEGAL manner (Since Interpol is,
legally, a private organization, its members have thus no right to act
by themselves on foreign territories. They remotely act as advisors to its
members' police forces).
	By the way, I said 'like'. As another example, I would cite the
COOPERATION between the FBI and the French Forces in the 1970's that led
to the dismanteling of the French Connection. Here again, the arrests were
LEGALLY performed by LOCAL (French) policemen, the only ones LEGALLY entitled
to ENFORCE the LAW.
	Did you understand the difference?
	Since you seem interested, I encourage you to search for other
sources by yourself...

|> 	It would be more appropriate at this point perhaps to ask Francois
|> to explain France's 'terrorist nation' behavior vis-a-vis Greenpeace and
|> tangentially, New Zealand. Or perhaps not so tangentially New Zealand. The
|> Kiwis incarcerated two French agents in the aftermath of the Rainbow
|> Warrior affair, but were persuaded to release them to the French government 
|> after they'd served a fraction of their sentence. Do you think those French
|> agents are still imprisoned now in France, given that the Kiwis found them
|> guilty of terrorist acts in their territory? Bzzzt! Sorry. They got off
|> scot free. Eh bien, if we run around kidnapping people in other 
|> countries with impunity, it might start to give the Kiwis all sorts of
|> ideas.............; ) 

	Your example is very relevant.

	In the Greenpeace case, simple example of a terrorist nation's
behavior, public opinion has reacted in such a manner that the Defence
Minister had to be fired, and official excuses were given to the NZ Government,
as well as GreenPeace. Hypocrit's job, maybe. But public opinion had an impact
on the Governement, which is more likely to avoid another affair than before.
As a citizen, I strongy disapprove what has been done, and I still feel ashamed
by the story. And I feel happy that many think so: it proves that we still have
respect for other nations.

	In the Mexican case (but as a contributor pointed, Panama is a better
example (no excuse of an old badly-written treaty)), it seems that there has
been no massive disagreement from the U.S. population, as if it were just
normal. Almost none of the people that sent articles bashing me, for instance,
have emitted a negative comment on this affair, which was the origin of
my first post. Maybe these are not representative of the population, but I
strongly doubt... This is that behaviour that I bash. Like it or not.

	About the deviation of the postings on Vietnam, also I feel sorry
about it: too much waste of bandwidth for nothing. My first reference of
Vietnam was after a guy said in a rather harsh manner that, without the
GREAT US Army in WWI & II, French would have been nothing. It was just to
remind him, in an as harsh manner, that things could change and that the
US Army could fail.
Someone suggested that I should read on Vietnam before posting about it, and
one even said that since I haven't been there I could not talk about it.
Since the global application of this second comment would be likely to negate
History, I tend to neglect it. To the first, I answer that I have read
indeed, but maybe not the same books as the poster did; discussing about
the bias on history is fastidious, so I will stop writing on that subject;
at least I am aware that it exists.
Some pointed that the French, as well as many others, acted similarily. It is
indeed true. I never wanted to say that we French were pure; it is, to me,
(as to anyone who has a few notions of history), a major insanity to think
that; as someone pointed, the notion of government implies lies and hypocrisy.
My point was just to say that nobody could play the pure, innocent, and mighty.
All governments act by pure interest, not philantropy: the French engaged
in Vietnam to save their colonies, and the Americans went to Vietnam to
have a chance to replace the French, as well as to have bases near China
when the war is over (were they to win). And so on, all around the world...

	Pityful situations have occured; by bashing them, we can just try to
make people react so that it will not happen again. Don't say it is useless:
Non-Governmental Organizations SUCH AS Amnesty International prove everyday
that it works. It is called humanitary bashing...
(I say 'such as' to avoid, like in the Interpol case, people arguing that in
 some cases it could fail. Of course it could, but it mainly works, and
 that's better than nothing...).

	I bash what I think is bad, and other people may think differently.
This is from what discussion comes. But when I bash, if I tend to use jokes,
I never use useless insults, as they do not help the discussion, and show that
the writer is more likely to have written on the control of his glands rather
than of his brain, making the contents of his post pointless. Concerned people
will easily recognize themselves...

	For the above, this is, on that subject, my last posting.
	Thank you for your cooperation.

								f.p.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   Zeu<FP> : The craziest programmer in France  |         _________          |
|------------------------------------------------|     /   |        \   \     |
| Francois Pellegrini is :                       |    /    |__   ___/    \    |
|        pelegrin@geocub.greco-prog.fr           |    \    |     |       /    |
|         pelegrin@prof.greco-prog.fr            |     \   |     |      /     |
|                                                |                            |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------