And I don't know if this is total fiction, but a great fictional work is Day of the Jackal. Movie is very good. Novel is great. It's about the assassination attempt by people pissed off at De Gaulle's pullout from Algeria.
And I don't know if this is total fiction, but a great fictional work is Day of the Jackal. Movie is very good. Novel is great. It's about the assassination attempt by people pissed off at De Gaulle's pullout from Algeria.
Day of the Jackal IS great entertainment, but more atmospheric than historical. Brings history to life, but not that much of it - and a lot of minor fiction.
Yup. What I found interesting is that, until he started murdering, I was torn between wanting the jackal to succeed and wanting the detective to succeed. Emotionally torn. Intellectually, I wanted the jackal to fail.
OAS, roughly "The Secret Organization", was a real group of French who continued terrorist attacks in Algiers after the government left in the 60s. The whole affair is still interesting as a pre-lude to modern international affairs- the "right to self determination" and Democracy still haunts us.
Hamas was democratically elected, so was Hitler, and Greek and American democracies supported slavery. Clearly, to me, there is absolutely zero intrinsically "good" about Democracy. Rights, however, *are* a moral principle necessary for a modern Capitalist, free society.
It is such a muddle today, that we have students protesting on behalf of terrorist Islamists "right" to impose Sharia law and theocracy on people; as if is a "good" tyranny is you manage to get 51% of voters to support it.
And I don't know if this is total fiction, but a great fictional work is Day of the Jackal. Movie is very good. Novel is great. It's about the assassination attempt by people pissed off at De Gaulle's pullout from Algeria.
Day of the Jackal IS great entertainment, but more atmospheric than historical. Brings history to life, but not that much of it - and a lot of minor fiction.
Yup. What I found interesting is that, until he started murdering, I was torn between wanting the jackal to succeed and wanting the detective to succeed. Emotionally torn. Intellectually, I wanted the jackal to fail.
OAS, roughly "The Secret Organization", was a real group of French who continued terrorist attacks in Algiers after the government left in the 60s. The whole affair is still interesting as a pre-lude to modern international affairs- the "right to self determination" and Democracy still haunts us.
Hamas was democratically elected, so was Hitler, and Greek and American democracies supported slavery. Clearly, to me, there is absolutely zero intrinsically "good" about Democracy. Rights, however, *are* a moral principle necessary for a modern Capitalist, free society.
It is such a muddle today, that we have students protesting on behalf of terrorist Islamists "right" to impose Sharia law and theocracy on people; as if is a "good" tyranny is you manage to get 51% of voters to support it.