". 

 :::Whatever you say about algerian massacres... At the end of the day, Fence did NOT have concentration camps, did not have a ""special organization"" made of convicted murderers designed to kill Armenians, and finally, did NOT have a ""final solution"" to deal with ALL the people of the same race as the one they were fighting. please refer to Armenian genocide history. (Oh and lastly, France did not massacre 1.5 million civilians either) 
 refer to pro and anti bill articles:  
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide 
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4092933.stm 
 http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-822182,0.html 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish-Armenian_War 
 http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-821450,0.html 
 http://ww.armenica.org   

 and about freedom of speech:  

 When that kind of law is voted you have to think it's not ""France"". What happens is that a group of people proposes a law and then, everybody vote it or not. The group proposing the law can have many reasons to do it. (some of them maybe bad) Maybe one of the guys is from armenian origin, maybe there are other reasons.  It's really not an entire country suddenly deciding ""hey guys! let's bother turkey"". 
 As I told you, there was controversary about the law. A lot of people thought on voting ""no"". Finally the law passed. Which I can understand cause when you have that kind of law in front of your eyes, it's easy to vote ""yes"" about it. 

 Honestly, I don't know about a law concerning the Algerian stuff  but I'm pretty sure if someone writes a school book telling it didn't exist, the guy will be sued to justice within 24 hours buy 100 associations and finally lose. 
 France has laws agaisnts racism and antisemitism. And many other counties too. I don't think those laws are about putting things under silence... 

 In 1996 in Mexico some schools made obligatory the reading of ""The protocols of Zion"", almost 30 years after the book was proven to be a huge hoax, to their students. Without a law, that crap could happen in France in some private schols. Thing is that it can't only because we have a law. 

 It's not about putting things under silence, it's what as a society we accept to be teached or not to our kids, it's saying 
 ""you can interpret facts, you can analyse history in different ways but there are limits, there are facts we won't allow you to disccus because changing history is a weapon of mass manipulation ( for example, all the attempts to make believe hollocaust did'nt exist have the goal to paint jewish as paople who did'nt deserved Israel and to increase hate about them ), because if I die, I don't want my kids listen to some crap and believe it's true."" 

 Of course there will always be racists in France and in other parts of the world and the law won't change anything, but it's a constraint to extremist political groups, because they can't say  what they want anymore, because a 5 years old kid  won't see a guy say ""Fucking blacks/jewish/muslims"" on the tv news, thinking that there must be reasons because that importat guy  with a nice suit or this pop star he really likes is saying that. 
 Those laws are not for the average guy in the street, they are for political personalities, for celebrities, teachers and all the figures of authority. 

 Once again I say that I think having this law now was an error but it's always the same: 
 If I have to choose between a government who pass that kind of law and one who complains about it, I'll always go for the first ones"