ran

gah conventionnal weapons aren't what matters right now .... and every body has to do some business you know ....

France or maybe Russia and ? who else ?

ESA finances 2 thirds of it and french government finances the rest

Centre Spatial guyanais European agencies don't have to step on our territory except for ground contral and technical works on the launchpad, it's an european operation but i doubt any european country would like to maintain security forces in such a distant and inhospitable place as Guyanese jungle we have pre-set installations and people already on spot , i don't see why other european countries should have to come in en masse (by the way , there's an old punk song of the 80's called Cayenne by the band Parabellum about the Cayenne penal colony and what has led a man to this prison , nice song , really)

Arianne is launched from Kourou , French Guyana our installations are there since well before the ESA efforts , we're just using what's already there and adding needed infrastructure when it has to be done, it's a good launching pad not far from equator (i doubt any other european country has pre-existing installations of that kind oversea) Kourou is our business since it's on a french territory on the topic of locals , the legion rarely hires locals for the job since with the years, a certain experience has been gained and accumulated in the guyanese jungle the foreign legion is part ... foreign , might explain what you've seen, "not all white" .... we have south americans, hispanics, south east asians, africans and so on... were these people uniformed ? did they have the legion's attributes ? if yes , then they're legionnaires

if i was one of the honor guards pictured , or the brother of a victim , it would be a clear place where to aim my 7.62X54R bullet ... no politics involved here, it's just that when i see these pictures of young men held by close friends , comrade in arms i think about my brothers , my little brother especially who is still in the army, i could really well one day have to be in the same situation as these boys , or he could have to carry my picture around ... i wouldn't be able to take that a picture taken during a ceremony of that kind would be modified for commercial , humourous or simple gap-filling purpose i can imagine the distress and discontent of the people in question , but i hope i will never have to feel it as much as i hope i will never have to feel the loss of a relative or a friend in conditions such as Chechnya war or any war all my thoughts now go to the famillies who will now have to endure this affront to the memories of their sons brothers and friends who died on the battlefield.

-ouch- .... that would have been the thing to do at first .... well .... i hope they'll can face this one ....

try to ask occidental workers to scrap large boats and see their reaction . it's one of the hardest , most dangerous jobs you may find on this planet , specialists doing this kind of stuff in Europe , for exemple would have to be paid a lot to risk themselves into such metal traps ........ that's why you send these old junks to third world

prepare anti-riot gear and CS gas ;)

bravo I agree with you and one just has to look back in history that death and killings are fundamental to military activities

how so ?

well as i said earlier , the black line on the right of the pictures held by the soldiers made it pretty obvious

agreed

edit this link quite fast , some pictures go against the forum rule warning , gruesome shots

notice the black[b/] fabric stripe remaining on the lower left(from the soldiers' point of view) as a mourning sign

(the mail will be our(bis forum members) own little contribution) but i suggest we create a petition on petitiononline as hellfish said and spread it over all the gaming forums we know and then forward the address to EGM

Ran rannyboy@wanadoo.fr French Foreign Legion (1988-1996 , achieved the rank of Sergent) Reserve officer in the French army (with the rank of lieutenant) French ministery of interior advisor (achieved the rank of Commandant in the French national police)

you could include a few pictures in the e-mail , and you could also add that we're talking about casualties for young draftees here , no russian special forces death commandos raiding chechen houses in the night to kidnap chechen young men we're talking about the exact same kind of men as the ones fighting right now in Iraq , young americans , except those russians went through harsher things and didn't have all the hi-tech gadgets the yanks did

Ran rannyboy@wanadoo.fr French Foreign Legion (1988-1996 , achieved the rank of Sergent) Reserve officer in the French army (with the rank of lieutenant) French ministery of interior advisor (achieved the rank of Commandant in the French national police)

add your function if you're current military or not or retired

that's not what they sign to do , that's what they sign for Well, when you apply, they don't ask you, "How'd you like to kill some bastard ragheads?" or tell you, "You're going to die in the army, it is inevitable". They ask you questions like "How would you feel about having to drop bombs on a target, which could be in the vicinity of innocent civilians?"... They don't tell you or make obvious the fact that you WILL kill other human beings, or you WILL get shot in the temple. you're right , but when you sign up , the possibility of having to kill somebody is quite high , that's what armies are made for generally , not to enforce diplomacy but to crush enemy skulls in your contract , you'll have to kill if ordered to , that's apart of military life too , that's why we're formed most of the time

my skills in written english are less than average

i remember about a TV report on Arte (franco-german TV channel). It shown the distress of the famillies of the soldiers who died , with the testimonies of their mother espeically, with pictures of their sons at all ages , it also shown the everyday life of russian infantrymen on the front line (that was more of a background report) , it also shown an expdition to find back the remains of several russian soldiers in a village who had died in an ambush (testimonies of survivors were quite gruesome and so were the pictures of the bodies, half carbonized remains that stood there for like 1 month , their BTR/BRDM had been ambushed , they took position behind it , but chchen rebels somewhat pierced and ignited the vehicle's fuel tanks which unloaded on the soldiers (already dead or not) then , we've had a footage of a morgue train (in fact a train used normally to carry meat through russia) where bodies were rassembled, an army doctor made descriptions of a few corpses and there complete bodies who arrived here maybe a couple of days before but there were also remains rassembled in plastic bags who had been left on the battlefield in area too dangerous to try to find the back for several months , there were also mutilated bodies (rebel's job) )

well , write one up if you want , it would be nice to put a little bit of background about chechya war (i wouldn't say biased , but more talking about the russian soldiers in this conflict, with for exemple sotries about the psycological impact on chechnya war veteran, the way famillies are treated by the russian administration/war ministery etc etc...)

we should get other FPS gamers to sign it too