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Still hope for the French?
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I guess I am in danger of having to change yet another opinion in response to changing facts. I am a fickle one. Judging by this quote out of Le Monde, I may have to conclude that there is hope in this world even for the French.

Francois, you don't know how it hurt to say that.

LE MONDE SWITCHES SIDES: An encouragig sign in France. Le Monde's editorial today, "Tragedie Europeenne," ends with the following sentiment: "If she did not know it yet, she knows it now: Europe is part of the battlefield of hyper-terrorism." Then there's this astonishing piece of black-and-white analysis: "Nothing, evidently, no cause, no context, no supposedly political objective, justifies this kind of [large scale] terrorism." Now they tell us. Whatever happened to all those sophisticated European "gray areas"? With any luck, they died in the wreckage of Madrid's trains. Here's another money quote from the French daily:

"If the trail back to Al-Qaida is confirmed, Europeans should rethink the war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, as did the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001. . . . Will March 11 have in Europe the same effect as September 11 in the US? After having spontaneously expressed their solidarity with the Americans, the Europeans, preoccupied with other forms of terrorism, found that the Americans had become consumed with paranoia. Contrary to the latter in 2001, Europeans today discover not only their own vulnerability, but also that they are confronted with a new phenomenon, mass terrorism. Like the Americans, they may now be forced to admit that a new form of world war has been declared, not against Islam but against totalitarian and violent fundamentalism. That the world's democracies are confronted with the same menace and should act together, using military means and waging at the same time a war for their ideals."
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Re: Still hope for the French? [ajfranke] [ In reply to ]
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The structure of the sentence "if she did not know it yet, she knows it now" which is a grammatical construction used in french not to say "you didn't know it before, now you know" but as a way to emphasize the importance of the topic...translation is correct.

The europeans have been fully aware that terrorism is not always only a national problem, not necessarly motivated (at least motivated by something we understand...). There are several european groups fighting terrorism, no country is fighting terrorism by itself (unless some special cases that are nation related like FLNC in France/Corsica)...
Europol and Interpol have units fighting terrorism at the european level and international level not national only...

The rest of the copy of the article you copied is a jole...the europeans didn't discover thursday that they are vulnerable and that mass terrorism is possible...they have been fighting fundamentalist islamic terrorism for many more years than the US...

The person who wrote this clearly didn't make his/her homework...

the last part of the last sentence is very interesting...
why did Spain got attack in the first place on thursday?
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Re: Still hope for the French? [ajfranke] [ In reply to ]
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for info the french gov. has been thinking about different types of attacks before 9/11 such as throwing commercial planes on The Hague (nuclear plant), attack in the channel tunnel, Eiffel tower etc...

it's not like we are discovering it...the first islamic terrorist act in France was in 1952 (well the earliest I could find) and so far we have been able to avoid major tragedies like 9/11 despite being much more vulnerable to islamic terrorism (proximity, more muslims in Europe, opening of the borders).
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