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[Shadow.97]

[The Doms are believed to have migrated to the region from India in Byzantine times, through Iran and into Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond. The Dom refugees are also present in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan but they are shunned and despised by the authorities and locals.

Does anyone have any clue as to why Gypsies (Roma and Doms) are despised by so many people? I don't know any Gypsies so with respect to them I have no opinion. Jews have always been despised by many people. I do know some Jews. As with everyone else, some are bad and some are good.

With respect to homeless people in France, the government doesn't do anything? Do they just leave them there to pose a danger to themselves and other, or is there any policy regarding the homeless?

I've never heard of Doms before, but Romanis are famous for stealing, begging, scamming, and selling fake goods on the street and being obnoxiously rude.
Using the word Gypsies is not recommended as it's about the same as using the N-word for black people. Alteast here. Perhaps it's different in other parts of the world. We are told to exclusively use Romani.

In sweden you can find Romanis making illegal/makeshift caravan parks and throwing trash all around them, and when it becomes messy enough they change location.
I think it is very important to make a differentiation between people who are still living this lifestyle and the ones who managed to get integrated into society. I would never call an integrated person a Gypsy, but I feel no guilt using it for the people who are taxing society.

When it comes to Jews, I spoke to a friend living in Algeria who said that they consider all jews bad due to Israels actions against Palestine.

Homelessness in Dublin surprised me. I've never seen so many homeless until I came there. People sleeping in alleys and on staircases to try and get some cover.

[scarface]

I've never heard of Doms before, but Romanis are famous for stealing, begging, scamming, and selling fake goods on the street and being obnoxiously rude.

They are also known for that here.
I remember that in May 2018 I was in Paris with my father (he died only a few months later) and we took the metro Pigalle (line 2 or 12, I don't remember) on the Bvd de Clichy. We were the last ones to board and suddenly I felt sth on the the back pockets of my jeans (there was nothing inside). A woman was behind me, with a multicolored veil, looking rather embarrassed. A man, probably the mentor, was also present. They took the metro and got off at the next station. I'm pretty sure they were Roma ("les roms" in French).

I was a bit surprised to learn that Romania has the cheapest super-fast broadband internet in the world. Nowadays, web developers in France are not always competitive and some projects are made in Romania because salaries are pretty low, and the internet network is apparently very good. Against all odds, Romania is now seen as the European Union's Silicon Valley.

In sweden you can find Romanis making illegal/makeshift caravan parks and throwing trash all around them, and when it becomes messy enough they change location.
I think it is very important to make a differentiation between people who are still living this lifestyle and the ones who managed to get integrated into society. I would never call an integrated person a Gypsy, but I feel no guilt using it for the people who are taxing society.

Your assumption is a bit paradoxical.
If they were "integrated into society", we would probably not talk about them. And maybe the word "Gypsy" wouldn't even exist. In French "Gypsy" can be translated as "gitan". They are also known in France as "gens du voyage", literally "travelling community". There are also more pejorative words like "bohémien, romanichel" to refer to the same community. By definition, they are nomadic, so their lifestyle might not be compatible with integration as you call it.
Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25419423

When it comes to Jews, I spoke to a friend living in Algeria who said that they consider all jews bad due to Israels actions against Palestine.

I never had problems with Jews.

Homelessness in Dublin surprised me. I've never seen so many homeless until I came there. People sleeping in alleys and on staircases to try and get some cover.

If you were in Paris, you woulnd't be disappointed either.

[Guliver]

I was a bit surprised to learn that Romania has the cheapest super-fast broadband internet in the world. Nowadays, web developers in France are not always competitive and some projects are made in Romania because salaries are pretty low, and the internet network is apparently very good. Against all odds, Romania is now seen as the European Union's Silicon Valley.

Just to clarify this a bit, (and I'm not saying you claimed so), the Roma/Romani are not "the people of Romania". The Roma are found throughout Europe, not even just eastern Europe, and of course also in Romania, while ethnic Romanians are a separate people. Fun fact, the name Romania comes from Rome, as in ancient Rome, because the Roman empire colonized that territory, and the Romanian language is a romance laguage, just like french and spanish. On the other hand, the name of the Roma likely comes from Sanskrit. And yeah, Romanian internet is super impressive.

[humbert]

Guliver: I think you're confused. I believe Scarface was abruptly changing the subject when he mentioned internet speeds in Romania and was not associating that country with Roma people.

How fast are average internet speeds in Romania? As far as I know South Korea has the fastest average speeds. I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where Google Fiber is available. I get 1000mbps up and down, ping speeds about 5 ms. This is far above the national average in the USA.

With respect to posts regarding Roma people and Jews, let's keep something in mind. In Latin America we have a proverb "paga justo por pecador", which translates as "the righteous pay the sinner's wages". NOT ALL Roma people, NOT ALL Jews are bad. They've been dealing with these stereotypes due to the minority that are bad. And so it is for all peoples of the world, even all non-human animals.

[scarface]

Just to clarify this a bit, (and I'm not saying you claimed so), the Roma/Romani are not "the people of Romania". The Roma are found throughout Europe, not even just eastern Europe, and of course also in Romania,

Guliver: I think you're confused. I believe Scarface was abruptly changing the subject when he mentioned internet speeds in Romania and was not associating that country with Roma people.
With respect to posts regarding Roma people and Jews, let's keep something in mind. In Latin America we have a proverb "paga justo por pecador", which translates as "the righteous pay the sinner's wages". NOT ALL Roma people, NOT ALL Jews are bad. They've been dealing with these stereotypes due to the minority that are bad. And so it is for all peoples of the world, even all non-human animals.

Well, Gulliver is perspicacious, because the transition between the Roma and the internet network of Romania was a bit strange. In fact I was implying that many Roma were coming from Romania indeed, and despite the denial of humbert. If it's true that Roma represent a significant minority in Romania, most of them are not living in Romania. After exhaustive investigation, I even found out that a large number of Roma are present in the United States and in Brazil and I didn't know that (But they are not present in Japan or in China...)
Apparently the word Rom comes from the word Dom in Sanskrit, which confirms the statement of Gulliver (The Dom and the Rom are therefore likely to be descendants of two different migration waves from the Indian subcontinent, separated by several centuries).

[scarface]

Today, I'm going to hold a conference about the football club of Saint Etienne known as ASSE.

Maybe some of you are fan of football, especially if you come from Europe of Africa.
Below you can see the most popular sports around the world and football is one of them. To put it bluntly, I'm not a football fan, I prefer tennis and I've been to Roland Garros several times to see tennis matches.


So today, I'm going to talk about the fall of a club: what's happening to the ASSE?

The Saint-Etienne football club, plagued by governance problems, the violence of certain supporters and an inconsistent strategy, will play in Ligue 2 during the 2022-2023 season. A shock for the city, and one more ordeal for this institution, which is for sale.

The Boutique des Verts or shop of the Greens is selling everything...A few rare supporters brave the heat of this early summer to rummage through boxes placed on the ground. They unearth trinkets and clothes in the colors of the Saint-Etienne Sports Association, here a 10-euro T-shirt, there a 5-euro mug... Even on sale, most of these relics, testimonials of a nightmarish 2021-2022 season, are struggling to find takers, like this failing football club whose sale, constantly postponed, is slow to materialize.

On the outskirts of the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium, of course, Monty's song came back to us, in 1976, and its refrain became an anthem: "Who is the strongest, obviously, it's the Greens. "But it was another century, at the time of the green cotton jersey with the logo "Manufrance" and European exploits. After the unfortunate European final lost in Glasgow against Bayern Munich (0-1), there was the incredible descent of the Champs-Elysées, where these magnificent losers, long hair and sideburns, paraded under the cheers of the Parisians...

The ASSE in 1976


Half a century later, the Greens have faded. The decline of the club, which began in the early 1980s in the wake of the so-called "slush fund" affair, married that of the city, affected by deindustrialization.

The last season will remain as a summary of the mistakes of ASSE, condemned to go down to Ligue 2. To make matters worse, the excesses that occurred during the final home match, against AJ Auxerre, synonymous with relegation and fury popular (invaded ground, mortar fire against the official stand, etc.), earned it sanctions: three penalty points for the 2022-2023 championship, four matches behind closed doors. Barely launched, the "immediate recovery" operation in Ligue 1 has already taken a hit.

Among the supporters, the anger, or rather the rage, no longer seems to be able to be contained.
The picture for this last evening of the season gives the measure of the problem: "ultras" on the lawn, nearly 1 million euros in damage, several injuries, panicked players spinning in the locker room, a degraded image, and therefore heavy penalties ...
"We have a lot of images of the incidents, a section of the police station is taking care of it, with a substitute trained in this delinquency, specifies the prosecutor of Saint-Etienne, David Charmatz, who has opened a preliminary investigation. Only one person filed a complaint for physical violence, but unacceptable things happened... The prosecution has some reason to worry. The wall of the property of the co-president of ASSE, Roland Romeyer, was tagged with an explicit "cross the street": he lives opposite a cemetery...

The ultras did not wish to answer questions from Le Monde, neither on this subject nor on the other aspects of this crisis, referring to their publications on social networks. With several thousand members each, the two largest groups, the Green Angels and the Magic Fans, constitute influential lobbies, whose reactions, sometimes violent, are feared by leaders. They want to be the guardians of the particular culture of this city with a strong popular tradition where players are asked to "wet the shirt", which has been too rarely the case for their taste this season.

[humbert]

Now that you mention sports, as we all know the FIFA World Cup is slightly over 4 months away. I watch almost every game, or at least as many as I can. Here in America football has gone from a virtually unknown sport to one of the most popular in less than 50 years. In fact, the American professional league MLS (Major League Soccer) is up to 28 teams. It was just 10 teams when they started in 1995, playing to virtually empty stadiums.

BTW the term "soccer" is not Americanism. It originated in England in 1894 as a shortened version of "Association Football", which is the sport's long name. Football is also known as "soccer" in Australia.

With respect to the map about favorite sports in different countries, of course American football is popular here but in some parts of the country, baseball predominates. It started in 1876 and is still very popular. There are a few countries on the map where I would probably disagree with the national sport as shown.

[scarface]

Tonight, new photos are available on the forum.


A photo taken in the avenue Charles Peguy in Sceaux (I live in the vicinity).



The RER station (RER B) of Sceaux



A "bird's eye view" of Sceaux and its surroundings. Actually, Sceaux is not very far from Paris. At night one can discern the light beam of the Eiffel tower, and from the top of a building one can easily see the Montparnasse tower.



There is also a "deprived area" in the north of the town of Sceaux known as "Les Blagis", near Fontenay aux Roses and Bagneux.

[humbert]

I didn't know you were living in Sceaux, which isn't too far from Paris. Last time I heard you were somewhere not too far from the Mediterranean. You certainly move around a lot.

[scarface]

I didn't know you were living in Sceaux, which isn't too far from Paris. Last time I heard you were somewhere not too far from the Mediterranean. You certainly move around a lot.

I'm living in an apartment in Sceaux that I rent. I was also the owner of a studio in Grau du roi. Since I could telework I could spend a lot of time in Grau du roi and take a  lot of photos. If I remember well, some users really enjoyed those photos (you and shadow.97 were particularly impressed by the Corsican sausages known as figatelli).