Fuck, already the assholes daydream about being heroes…
There’s a word that Tom would prefer we not use, and it’s a word I hate, too…but it probably applies here.
@JMfreespeech Judith Miller
Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for “safe” spaces…
I’m back in the US, my wife is in Bulgaria (she’s coming home next week), and both of us are safe, thanks. So are some of our friends we met with there.
I lost a rambling screed I was writing. I didn’t get far enough to make a point, but somewhere in there was that this terror I’m feeling is out of proportion to the atrocities they’re making. We should grieve for our dead and live with sensible preparations but what they want is us terror-struck. Fuck those guys. No one on our side wants to be killed, especially when we’re laughing, drinking at an outside table on a crowded street, but they (the enemy) are a drop in the bucket compared to us. As absolutely atrocious as this is, we still need to worry more about automobile collisions and cancer rates and so on rather than their flares of senseless bloodshed. We can’t live in, or be pushed to live in, constant fight/freeze/flight. Those fucking assholes. Sorry, like I said, rambling.
We live in privileged times.
The New York Times reports a French TV stations say the standoff at the Bataclan theater has come to a violent end:
A hostage situation at the Bataclan concert hall came to an end on Friday night when French police raided the building, according to French television, which reported “dozens of dead” at the theater.
Witnesses called it a “massacre” and a scene of “carnage,” according to French television.
The police killed at least two of the hostage-takers, who threw grenades at the police as they advanced.
-Tom
I’m having trouble deciding between a giant wall around the Middle East or just nuking it and starting over.
French police reporting about 100 dead in the Bataclan.
Hearing 100 dead at the theater.
Victims were live tweeting as it was happening.
christ.
This is going to hit the whole refugee crisis thing full-on. It’s going to be very hard, probably impossible, for most European governments to hold on to open borders after this, if it turns out that the perpetrators were people who went to Syria and came back as refugees, in particular.
It seems what’s needed, too, is a full-court ideological offensive to communicate the horror of the ideology that is driving these barbarians. Murder, rape, slavery–these things cannot be allowed to become synonymous with Islam, but that’s what the ISIS types are doing, whether that’s their goal or not. I can’t believe that all the recruits they get are fully aware that the people they are throwing in with are brutal slavers, rapists, murderers, and thieves. If they are aware, and still join, then God help us all.
Facebook is doing an awesome thing where people can check in if they’re involved in a “safety alert”, in this case for “paris terror attack”. Sure, it doesn’t help people that aren’t on Facebook or aren’t able to post that they are in the affected area and are or aren’t safe, but it’s a good start. Saves on a lot of individual calls.
uh wow.
I think there are a ton of innocent folks in the ME who would take issue with either of those…choices…
Just ignore me…
I do think we need to acknowledge our ME policy has been a failure for decades. And it’s not getting better.
Aujourd’hui nous sommes tous Français.
I had to google help my 20 year old high school French. I can’t express enough empathy and sympathy to the people of France.
EDIT: It’s P&R, comment about not talking about gun control retracted. Also, one of the hopes of my heart would have been for the folks in that theater to have had a Corbin Dallas, which doesn’t appear to have happened.
EDIT 2 Edited: Of the 3 gunmen in the Bataclan, two were killed, one taken alive by police.
CNN reporting 118 dead at the Bataclan.
One musician I know a tiny bit (sort of, I interviewed Dave Catching a couple of times years ago) who was playing is apparently OK. Or at least we hope.
Our ME policy has been dismal forever, that is true. But one reason it’s been dismal is that we haven’t really had a policy, at all, beyond short-term gains. We need to decide on what our policy is going to be, that is, what goals it should serve. One could argue, with admitted hindsight, that backing the mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Soviets was a Bad Idea with capital letters. Pretty much everything that’s been happening goes back in some ways to that. One could also argue that we should have backed that SOB Assad and prevented ISIS from ever getting a foot hold–one bad guy we know and who doesn’t export violence globally being better than a collective of murderers that do. But that’s all hindsight.
In some ways it is up to the people in the region to take a stand, and right now, it seems that either isn’t feasible or they don’t want to. I suspect the former, which makes the proper policy one of making it possible for people in the Middle East to chart a destiny that is way different than the one ISIS wants.
How soon before we hear “Iran Treaty” spun into this?
The Western World needs to decide what our values are and stick to them. And then throw that all away and prefer realpolitik. And then defer to short term economic concerns of only moderate value and compromise everything done before. And then change direction 180 degrees every few years with the election of a new administration/government. Don’t forget the stupid mistakes!
Whatever goes on in the ME, goes on. What the Western World really has to do is decide what does it mean to be Western within their own countries. And frankly everyone is too terrified of the implications of that conversation to dare have it. Everyone still hopes that all that matters is economic opportunity, lots of money, consumer culture and a good time, and then all the tensions will just eventually work themselves out. They will, right? I mean, they have to! We don’t have an ideology that can deal with what happens if they don’t, so by definition they must.
What terrible news. Paris is one of the great cities of the world, a destination I hope to see someday.
This kind of things pushes me, emotionally, towards a more hardline, conservative stance. Keep the muslims out. Keep them away from me and my family. I don’t advocate that, but damned if stuff doesn’t make me feel like that. That, and bomb the fuck out of ISIS and Al Quaeda.
Also, fuck religion. Religion may have many positives, but it seems to fuel incredible acts of hatred.
That was something that struck me when I was Paris last December, and again this past August. There was a heavy security presence, and not just police - but paratroopers on street corners.
I have a profound distaste for that woman… but I can’t say she’s wrong.
And Europe was already in the throes of a right wing resurgence.