Well, er...there's also the first "treatment" for rabies, pasteurization, the first drugs to actually treat schizophrenia, various techno-mechanical advances (recoil dampening gun carriages), and Michelin tires, so maybe not JUST the "BJ"...Besides the greatest contribution France ever made to society was the BJ.
Anyway, I'm not a fan of the French, and I'm not here to defend them. What I wanted to point out has little to do with the riots (a precipitous reaction to precipitous government antics), but more to do with the most recent terrorist shootings (the most recent was at a "Christmas Shopping Center"?). I notice that the perpetrator, like many of his predecessors, was killed by the GIGN
or other units. Not many of them have survived. This MAY have much to do with the creeps' unwillingness to be taken alive, but I ALSO suspect that the French Law Enforcement has tacitly adopted a policy in which no extraordinary efforts will be made to capture the bad-guys. The LEOs MIGHT accept their surrender if the creeps make an effort, but I sense that none of the agencies are going out of their way to "talk them down" or neutralize them in a non-lethal manner.
I think this is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure a "kill on detection" approach is quite right, but the French may have realized that the days of non-lethal apprehension and "intelligence gathering" have passed, and that persons who engage in such atrocities should be given little if anything in the way of quarter or reprieve.