Paris atrocity

Just wanted to register my profound sympathy for the victims (and their friends and relatives) of the appalling carnage that was perpetrated in Paris on Friday night.

I'd like to add Beirut and Yemen to that.

seems like a case of tit for tat, and more of the same to come. terror begets terror. French citizens don't deserve to die for their government, mid-east citizens don't deserve to die for French government either ..or US government, or Saudi, Israeli , German, Polish, Syrian etc

I don't think its right to single out a peoples for sympathy. peoples are suffering every day with no sympathy or news headlines or threads
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I disagree profoundly. While I have sympathy for all who die as a result of conflict, I cannot help but feel closer to people who are geographically and culturally close to me, especially when, unarmed and innocent, they are murdered by a gang of fanatical psychopaths who use religion as a peg on which to hang their nihilistic,murderous actions.

fair enough. I get the geographical and cultural proximity, I expect a lot of people feel the same. I felt sympathy for the wonders caught in 7/7.

I find it hard to see the difference between innocent people  being killed by a gang of psychopaths and innocent people being killed by a gang of psychopaths in uniform. If anything the scale of murdered innocents is tipped very much into the psychopaths in uniform

I'm not saying I don't feel sympathy, I do, but my sympathy doesn't have a cultural or geographical conditions


Edit: ...Says "discuss" at the bottom of the page. If you want a sympathy thread, say the word and I'll remove my posts

Well that must have been an interesting change of events. One moment everything is fine, the restaurants seem like a safe place to go and the French people are happily swearing at each other at their sports stadium. Then merde! Half the city is blown to shreds...Oh my. That definitely woke up the president. It's a pity because he was probably having such a lovely dream until chaos erupted. Stupid terrorists!

My regards to people who lost their lives and may their souls RIP.(Humor is a good way of dealing with events like these. Hence my paragraph of rambling)    

This is, I think, a moving and civilized response from a man whose wife was killed in Friday night's attack:

“Friday night, you took an exceptional life - the love of my life, the mother of my son - but you will not have my hatred. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, you are dead souls. If this God, for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife would have been one more wound in his heart.

So, no, I will not grant you the gift of my hatred. You're asking for it, but responding to hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be scared, to view my countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my liberty for my security. You lost.

I saw her this morning. Finally, after nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago. Of course I am devastated by this pain, I give you this little victory, but the pain will be short-lived. I know that she will be with us every day and that we will find ourselves again in this paradise of free love to which you have no access.

We are just two, my son and me, but we are stronger than all the armies in the world. I don't have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.”

Antoine Leiris