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Real prizes, these guys. Take the way they carry out their bombings. They plant a lot of bombs, at least 9,000 in the past 30 years -- but the bombs are purposely weak, like about as strong as an M-80. The FLNC only puts its itsy bitsy bombies where nobody'll get hurt, see. They're "symbolic" bombs, meaning all they're designed to do is make a hole in something so it gets shown on the evening news and the FLNC gets its name on TV. They're not exactly the people's choice anyway. The pro-independence party gets less than 20% of the Corsican vote. In fact, the French just arranged a referendum for them. The whole island got to vote on whether to stick with those big fat welfare checks from Paris or go it alone: Vive le Corse, poor but free! It was no contest: welfare and subsidized baguettes won hands down. This pisses the FLNC off no end, but they won't listen to the voters and quit their phony war. Why should they? Why be another French wage slave when you can strut around being whispered about as a brave Corsican rebel? Especially when the lame Frog authorities won't even do anything to you. All the macho with none of the risk, damn! If I could find a Corsican great-grandma in the family tree, I'd head over and give it a try myself. It's gotta beat Fresno -- those lucky bastards have a 35-hour work week, and you can better the brave Corsicans aren't revolting against THAT French law. Here's a typical FLNC "military" operation. On September 18, 1999 the FLNC set off five bombs simultaneously, all over Corsica. At 2:30 a.m., when they were sure all the buildings would be empty. I mean, you wouldn't want your bombs to hurt any of your oppressors or anything. Results of the big blitz: Total damage to buildings, none. Total casualties, zero. Total bullshit: total, dude. You can go as far back in history as you want and you won't find an army that specialized in not hurting its enemies. Like Bart Simpson says to the mall-dojo Sensei when the guy starts preaching peace-through-karate, "Dude, I already know how NOT to hit a guy."
It makes you wonder what goes on in these people's heads. If they really want the French out, they'd do what the Algerians did, and start seriously terrorizing them into running for the boats. The Algerians killed anybody that ate croissants or thought Jerry Lewis was funny. And it worked. Algeria may be a mess, but it's an independent mess. The Corsicans with their toy army and nerf bombings -- it's like they know they're fakes. This may sound like a harsh thing to say, but the way you can tell what people take seriously is what they'll kill for, like money, or pride, or country, or family honor or whatever. The FLNC may sit around singing Corsican songs but they don't have the guts to kill for the place. But don't go thinking it's because they're nice guys. They're killers, but the only people they kill are...you guessed it: other Corsican nationalists. Not the French cops or soldiers, not the rich vacationers from Paris who've bought up most of the decent land in Corsica. Just each other. They killed one of their own just a couple weeks ago (August 25). A Corsican "militant" who'd done time for planting bombs was shot in a French-style drive-by: two guys on a motor scooter. That's what they really care about -- who's top dog in the local pack. And that's all they care about. Well damn, this was supposed to be all lighthearted and all. But I can't lie, this world is getting me down. You've got this "peace" in Iraq that costs more than the space shuttle and works about as well as the O rings...then you've got these phony Euro-midget wars where the brave rebels are just my grandpa's "brush-poppers" on scooters. I mean, that's the worst of it, scooters. A drive-by on a scooter. We're just no damn good, that's all.
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